User Satisfaction and Crowding at Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

Effective management and monitoring of recreational use is fundamental in marine protected areas. The primary purpose of this study is to examine user’s satisfaction levels, crowding levels and the relationship between them at Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Online surveys were sent via Qualtrics to email addresses obtained from the state of Florida during the summer of 2020. The results showed that the respondents felt very satisfied and only slightly crowded while snorkeling or scuba diving during their most recent 2019 trip in the Florida Keys, although satisfaction was still negatively impacted by crowding. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that satisfaction levels were significantly lower in users who saw more people than they expected. A linear regression indicated significantly lower satisfaction with increasing age. Furthermore, a multiple regression showed that experiencing natural surroundings has a significant positive relationship in overall trip satisfaction, i.e., users that are more satisfied experiencing natural surroundings are also likely to be more satisfied with their overall trip satisfaction. This study suggests that the convergence of social and natural resource research and practices can help managers to create better policies that will maximize human benefits from, and minimize human pressures on, ocean and coastal environments.

Internships for TINRO-Center specialists in fisheries research and fish production organizations in Japan

In the period from 1994 to 2007, Japanese scientific and industrial fishing organizations received trainees from the TINRO-Center. The internship topics included familiarization with Japanese resource research, fish processing technologies, and some aspects of aquaculture. The article discusses the conditions that made these internships possible, as well as the change in conditions that led to the completion of this type of Russian-Japanese cooperation in fishing.

Hide and Seek: The Orphan Well Problem in America

It’s a problem as old as the industry itself. The initial oil rush in the late 1800s spread like wildfire through Pennsylvania, and by 1891 the state’s annual crude output had hit 31 million barrels, or 58% of the nation’s total oil production for that year. However, by the turn of the century the bloom was off the rose. Pennsylvania’s once-robust oil allure had been eclipsed by finds in Texas, California, and Oklahoma, each spawning its own regional oil booms. So why the history lesson? Because it’s important to understand the potential volume and impact of orphan wells in the US. In the infancy of the industry, plugging-and-abandonment (P&A) techniques were crude at best, if anyone even went to the trouble. Worse still was the overall record keeping at the time. With oil booms around the country setting off races to harness as much black gold as possible, wells were being drilled at breakneck pace. Once these earliest wells were tapped of their commercial usefulness, operators moved on to the next. There was little-to-no over-sight. No regulations. No standards. The result? Thousands, if not more, of scattered, undocumented wells. “Back in the day, you have people drilling wells, and nobody’s keeping track of where the wells are drilled and who owns the wells,” said Daniel Raimi, fellow with Resource for the Future, an independent institution that conducts environmental, energy, and natural resource research. “The government’s not keeping track and has little to no regulation in place to ensure that operators safely decommission their assets at the end of their lives. As a result, you have wells that maybe produce for a couple of years, and then the owners walk away. Multiply that by a couple of hundred thousand and now you’ve got a problem.” Today, there is plenty of oversight and regulation for the industry to leave abandoned wells in much better shape than those earliest probes. However, orphan wells are still a problem. To paint the clearest picture, it would be prudent to define what an orphan well is. This is where we run into our first problem. Definitions can vary wildly from state to state and organization to organization. Some lump all abandoned, unplugged wells into their counts as orphan wells. Others count all idle wells. However, for the sake of clarity we will define orphan wells as those nonproducing, idle wells whose ownership is unknown. By that definition it is safe to say that many of the nation’s earliest wells fit that criteria. In more modern times, orphans result from idle wells whose owner goes belly-up prior to any P&A work. In most of these cases, bonds are employed to help offset the cost of plugging these wells. However, while they vary state to state, most bonding minimums do not cover the full cost of abandonment and remediation, if needed. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, there are about 2 million unplugged, abandoned oil and gas wells scattered across the US. Other experts place the number higher; some believe it is lower. Some researchers believe as many as half of those could be orphan wells. A survey by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission in 2018 put the range of orphaned and idle wells at around 560,000 to 1.1 million. Again, abandoned doesn’t always mean orphaned. One fact that can be extrapolated from the data gathered to date is that no one knows for sure just how many orphaned wells are out there. But that is changing.

Practices and Attitudes toward Returning Genomic Research Results to Low-Resource Research Participants

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Many research programs are challenged to accommodate low-resource research participants’ (LRRP) ancillary care needs when returning genomic research results. We define LRRP as those who are low income, uninsured, underinsured, or facing barriers to act upon the results returned. This study evaluates current policies and practices surrounding return of results (RoR) to LRRP, as well as the attitudes of investigators toward providing ancillary care to LRRP. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A semi-structured interview study was conducted with representatives of 35 genomic research programs nationwide. Eligible programs were returning, or planning to return, medically actionable genomic results to participants. <b><i>Results:</i></b> Three content categories emerged from this study, including: (1) RoR structures, (2) barriers to RoR to LRRP, and (3) solutions to meet community and LRRP needs. Three major structures of RoR emerged: (1) RoR Embedded in Clinical Care, (2) RoR Independent of Clinical Care, and (3) Reliance on Clinical Partnerships to Facilitate RoR. Inadequacy of program resources to address the needs of LRRP was commonly considered a significant obstacle. The attitudes and views of informants regarding responsibility to provide ancillary care for LRRP receiving genomic results were highly varied. Some informants believed that genomic sequencing and testing was not a priority for LRRP because of other pressing issues in their lives, such as housing and food insecurity. Research programs differ regarding whether clinical and social support for LRRP is considered within the purview of the research team. Some programs instituted accommodations for LRRP, including social work referral and insurance enrollment assistance. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Support to access downstream treatment is not readily available for LRRP in many genomic research programs. Development of best practices and policies for managing RoR to LRRP is needed.

The Role and Opportunities of the Regional Economy in the Agrarian Sector In Ensuring the Production of Competitive Products

The paper discusses the importance of using the opportunities of the regional economy in the production of competitive agricultural products at the modern stage. The 8-year cycle of declared priority and state protectionism has not substantially changed the situation, the field still needs to bereformed, most of the systemic-structural and organizational-technical issues are unresolved. The importance of the synergistic effect of centrifugal policies is completely ignored. Georgia’s commitments under the Deep and Comprehensive Agreement with the European Union in terms of strengthening, decentralization and deconcentration of self-government, are not actually fulfilled; Therefore, in the current situation, the opportunities of the regional economy are untapped in the country. Accordingly, nowadays the opportunities of the regional economy are unused in the country, initiatives and proposals from the places are not considered at all. The principle of action adopted in the EU countries, which actively use the specific model in governance, is completely ignored. Moreover, all types of stimulus and protectionist policies are implemented only from the center and lack of the full-fledged on-site resource research, understanding the information-analytical reality, the visions of identifying risks and benefits, as well as the initial competitiveness. Solving the issues of territorial arrangement of Georgia, the active use of the opportunities of the regional economy and proper spatial development of the territories give us additional opportunities to solve the existing problems in the field and to ensure the activation of mechanisms for creating the competitive products. The agenda raises the need to address a number of fundamental problems that can be broken down into stages and implemented in the form of targeted action-program modeling. In order to make full use of the regional factor, it is necessary to be directly involved in policy management issues and to offer a microzonal adjusted incentive system, synergistic effect of centrifugal and centrifugal policies, generalization of all local specific problems, situational and contextual analysis, resource research. The role of an active land management policy issues, the establishment of the principles of competitive culture zones and the definition of sectoral-territorial specifics are an incomplete list of topics. Moreover, in order to achieve competitiveness, it is important to highlight the starting advantage, which in this context must beexercised under multilateral responsibility, where both levels of the state hierarchical system will have their own rights and responsibilities. And the structural unit (cooperative, cluster) is fully responsible for ensuring the project-defined outcome. By implementing the regional economic principles, it is possible to consider the economic-commercial, on the one hand, within the framework of the targeted program, and on the other hand, the socio-demographic aspects that underlie the state policy on the development of the sector and the region. In the current situation, the importance of the convergent nature of development and inclusive involvement, which should be the result of a reasonable policy of the state, and it has no alternative in the current situation. Keywords: regional economy, competitive products, involvement of self-governing bodies, decentralization, socio-economic situation, System-structural reform, analytical studies, targeted programs.

Predicting Tropical Monsoon Hydrology Using CFSR and CMADS Data over the Cau River Basin in Vietnam

To improve knowledge of this matter, the potential application of two gridded meteorological products (GMPs), the China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT model (CMADS) and Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), are compared for the first time with data from ground-based meteorological stations over 6 years, from 2008 to 2013, over the Cau River basin (CRB), northern Vietnam. Statistical indicators and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model are employed to investigate the hydrological performances of the GMPs against the data of 17 rain gauges distributed across the CRB. The results show that there are strong correlations between the temperature reanalysis products in both CMADS and CFSR and those obtained from the ground-based observations (the correlation coefficients range from 0.92 to 0.97). The CFSR data overestimate precipitation (percentage bias approximately 99%) at both daily and monthly scales, whereas the CMADS product performs better, with obvious differences (compared to the ground-based observations) in high-terrain areas. Regarding the simulated river flows, CFSR-SWAT produced “unsatisfactory”, while CMADS-SWAT (R2 > 0.76 and NSE > 0.78) performs better than CFSR-SWAT on the monthly scale. This assessment of the applicative potential of GMPs, especially CMADS, may further provide an additional rapid alternative for water resource research and management in basins with similar hydro-meteorological conditions.

VILAR RESOURCE BOTANICS: IDEAS, IMPLEMENTATION, PROSPECTS

The article describes the resource research of medicinal plants by VILAR employees from a historical point of view. The approaches to planning research work, organizational forms of research, the scientific community and research programs in floristry, the search for new medicinal plants, botanical resource studies, and population ecology are briefly described. Researchers and their dissertations for the period of 1950–1990 years are presented, research prospects are assessed.