Natural resources along the Outer Coast of Washington provide a variety of economic, social, and cultural benefits to the state's residents, including tourism and recreation. Knowledge of the intensity and spatial distribution of recreation use can help inform marine spatial planning (MSP) and management of parks and marine protected areas (MPAs). A survey was funded by the State of Washington to support its MSP process and addressed visitation to the Outer Coast with emphasis on outdoor recreation activities. In 2013 and 2014, Point97 and the Surfrider Foundation conducted an Internet survey using a panel from Knowledge Networks (KN), a marketing research firm. The panel included a random sample of households in the State of Washington. In 2014, the survey was expanded to address management plan objectives of Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS). The survey
Despite being among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth, coral reefs face ongoing threats that could negatively impact the human populations who depend on them. The National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) collects and monitors data on various aspects of U.S. coral reefs to provide a holistic understanding of the status of the reefs and adjacent human communities. This paper explores results from the NCRMP’s first socioeconomic monitoring cycle using an ecosystem services framework and examines how these results can be used to improve coral reef management in the following U.S. coral reef jurisdictions: American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Florida, Guam, Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Results suggest that residents in the U.S. Pacific coral reef basin may hold stronger cultural and provisioning values, whereas residents in the U.S. Atlantic coral reef basin may hold stronger regulating values. These findings suggest that outreach efforts have been successful in communicating benefits provided by coral reef ecosystems to the public. They also provide insight into which ecosystem services are valued in each jurisdiction, allowing resource managers to make science-based decisions about how to communicate conservation and management initiatives.
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