Populated coastal areas worldwide have a legacy of numerous solid waste disposal sites. At the same time, mean sea level is rising and likely to accelerate, increasing flooding and/or erosion. There is therefore concern that landfill sites located at and near the coast pose a growing risk to the environment from the potential release of liquid and solid waste materials. This paper aims to assess our present understanding of this issue as well as research and practice needs by synthesizing the available evidence across a set of developed country cases, comprising England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States (Florida). Common insights gained here include: (1) a lack of data and limited appreciation of waste release from coastal landfill as a potential problem; (2) recognition of the scale and diversity of coastal landfill waste within a range of generic settings (or situations); and (3) a lack of robust protocols that allow the impact of different categories of waste release to the coast to be assessed in a consistent and evidence-based manner, most particularly for solid waste. Hence, a need for greater understanding of the following issues is identified: (1) the amount, character and impact of waste that could be released from landfill sites; (2) the acceptability and regulation of waste eroding from coastal landfills; (3) present and future erosion rates at landfill sites suggesting the need for more monitoring and relevant predictive tools; (4) the full range of possible management methods for dealing with waste release from landfills and the science to support them; and (5) relevant long-term funding mechanisms to address this issue. The main focus and experience of current management practice has been protection/retention, or removal of landfills, with limited consideration of other feasible solutions and how they might be facilitated. Approaches to assess and address solid waste release to the marine/coastal environment represent a particular gap. Lastly, as solid waste will persist indefinitely and sea levels will rise for many centuries, the long timescale of this issue needs wider appreciation and should be included in coastal and waste policy.
Vessel traffic management systems can be employed for environmental management where vessel activity may be of concern. One such location is in San Francisco Bay where a variety of vessel types transit a highly developed urban estuary. We analyzed vessel presence and speed across space and time using vessel data from the Marine Monitor, a vessel tracking system that integrates data from the Automatic Identification System and a marine-radar sensor linked to a high-definition camera. In doing so, we provide data that can inform collision risk to cetaceans who show an increased presence in the Bay and evaluation of the value in incorporating data from multiple sources when observing vessel traffic. We found that ferries traveled the greatest distance of any vessel type. Ferries and other commercial vessels (e.g., cargo and tanker ships and tug boats) traveled consistently in distinct paths while recreational traffic (e.g., motorized recreational craft and sailing vessels) was more dispersed. Large shipping vessels often traveled at speeds greater than 10 kn when transiting the study area, and ferries traveled at speeds greater than 30 kn. We found that distance traveled and speed varied by season for tugs, motorized recreational and sailing vessels. Distance traveled varied across day and night for cargo ships, tugs, and ferries while speed varied between day and night only for ferries. Between weekdays and weekends, distance traveled varied for cargo ships, ferries, and sailing vessels, while speed varied for ferries, motorized recreational craft, and sailing vessels. Radar-detected vessel traffic accounted for 33.9% of the total track distance observed, highlighting the need to include data from multiple vessel tracking systems to fully assess and manage vessel traffic in a densely populated urban estuary.
Most species of whales are vulnerable to vessel collisions, and the probability of lethality increases logistically with vessel speed. An Automatic Identification System (AIS) can provide valuable vessel activity data, but terrestrial-based AIS has a limited spatial range. As the need for open ocean monitoring increases, AIS broadcasts relayed over earth-orbiting satellites, satellite AIS (SAIS), provides a method for expanding the range of AIS broadcast reception. We used SAIS data from 2013 and 2014 to calculate vessel density and speed over ground around the coast of Washington state in the northwestern United States. Nearby shipping lanes connecting the Ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and in Canada, Vancouver, have the greatest density of vessel traffic arriving and departing. Knowledge of shipping activity is important in this area due to the nearby presence of NOAA designated Cetacean Density and Distribution Working Group's Biologically Important Areas (BIA) for large whale species vulnerable to vessel collisions. We quantified density and speed for each vessel type that transits through BIA's. We found that cargo and tanker vessels traveled the farthest distance at the greatest speeds. As ship-strike risk assessments have traditionally relied on terrestrial AIS, we explored issues in the application of SAIS data. Temporal gaps in SAIS data led to a resulting systematic underestimation of vessel speed in calculated speed over ground. However, SAIS can be helpful in documenting minimum vessel speeds across large geographic areas and across national boundaries, especially beyond the reach of terrestrial AIS receivers. SAIS data can also be useful in examining vessel density at broad scales and could be used to assess basin-wide open ocean routes. Future use of additional satellite platforms with AIS receivers and technological advances will help rectify this issue and improve data coverage and quality.
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