Abstract:Despite the ubiquity of coastal infrastructure, it is unclear what factors drive its placement, particularly for water access infrastructure (WAI) that facilitates entry to coastal ecosystems such as docks, piers, and boat landings. The placement of WAI has both ecological and social dimensions, and certain segments of coastal populations may have differential access to water. In this study, we used an environmental justice framework to assess how public and private WAI in South Carolina, USA are distributed w… Show more
“…This study builds on previous research we conducted on 2016 data of public and private WAI distribution in coastal South Carolina 9 . We identified nearly 12,000 private docks across six counties in that study, which inspired us to examine the historical development of these structures.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 90%
“…In South Carolina, all areas below mean high water are public property, however, as discussed in the introduction, this legal status does not ensure functional access to coastal waters. Our study builds on prior research we conducted on dock distribution in this same area and further system description can be found therein 9 . Figure 1 The main map shows census tracts in the study area.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We present the years of imagery for each county in Table 1 . Additionally, we also used 2016 data from our prior study of South Carolina docks 9 . We did not gather the 2016 data from imagery, instead we acquired it as pre-digitized dock polygons from the Ocean & Coastal Resource Management division of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control ( https://sc-department-of-health-and-environmental-control-gis-sc-dhec.hub.arcgis.com/ ).…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Private docks augment individual access to estuaries by providing entry through their fixed structure (particularly in soft-sediment ecosystems) and a place to store and launch vessels. More importantly, because most docks in South Carolina are built on personal property 9 they can act as a conservative proxy for the number of waterfront private property parcels in an area. This provides researchers with a useful, easily identifiable feature to quantify the minimum extent of shoreline privatization.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Comparatively few works have directly quantified access in coastal systems through an EJ framework, but studies have found mixed results with respect to the influence of race and income on public access points 1 , 2 , 19 . To our knowledge, only one other study has focused on the socioeconomic distribution of private water access in the Southeastern US 9 .…”
Homeowners in coastal environments often augment their access to estuarine ecosystems by building private docks on their personal property. Despite the commonality of docks, particularly in the Southeastern United States, few works have investigated their historical development, their distribution across the landscape, or the environmental justice dimensions of this distribution. In this study, we used historic aerial photography to track the abundance and size of docks across six South Carolina counties from the 1950s to 2016. Across our roughly 60-year study period, dock abundance grew by two orders of magnitude, mean length of newly constructed docks doubled, and the cumulative length of docks ballooned from 34 to 560 km. Additionally, we drew on census data interpolated into consistent 2010 tract boundaries to analyze the racial and economic distribution of docks in 1994, 1999, 2011, and 2016. Racial composition, measured as the percentage of a tract’s population that was White, positively correlated with dock abundance in each year. Median household income and dock abundance were only correlated in 2011. Taken together, these metrics indicate the growing desire for direct estuary access, however, that access does not appear to be equally spread across racial groups. Because docks enhance estuarine access and demarcate private property, our study provides longitudinal insights into environmental justice concerns related to disparate private property ownership. We found a persistent correlation between the racial characteristics of an area and dock abundance, strongly indicating that White South Carolinians have had disproportionately greater private water access for the past two decades.
“…This study builds on previous research we conducted on 2016 data of public and private WAI distribution in coastal South Carolina 9 . We identified nearly 12,000 private docks across six counties in that study, which inspired us to examine the historical development of these structures.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 90%
“…In South Carolina, all areas below mean high water are public property, however, as discussed in the introduction, this legal status does not ensure functional access to coastal waters. Our study builds on prior research we conducted on dock distribution in this same area and further system description can be found therein 9 . Figure 1 The main map shows census tracts in the study area.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We present the years of imagery for each county in Table 1 . Additionally, we also used 2016 data from our prior study of South Carolina docks 9 . We did not gather the 2016 data from imagery, instead we acquired it as pre-digitized dock polygons from the Ocean & Coastal Resource Management division of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control ( https://sc-department-of-health-and-environmental-control-gis-sc-dhec.hub.arcgis.com/ ).…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Private docks augment individual access to estuaries by providing entry through their fixed structure (particularly in soft-sediment ecosystems) and a place to store and launch vessels. More importantly, because most docks in South Carolina are built on personal property 9 they can act as a conservative proxy for the number of waterfront private property parcels in an area. This provides researchers with a useful, easily identifiable feature to quantify the minimum extent of shoreline privatization.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Comparatively few works have directly quantified access in coastal systems through an EJ framework, but studies have found mixed results with respect to the influence of race and income on public access points 1 , 2 , 19 . To our knowledge, only one other study has focused on the socioeconomic distribution of private water access in the Southeastern US 9 .…”
Homeowners in coastal environments often augment their access to estuarine ecosystems by building private docks on their personal property. Despite the commonality of docks, particularly in the Southeastern United States, few works have investigated their historical development, their distribution across the landscape, or the environmental justice dimensions of this distribution. In this study, we used historic aerial photography to track the abundance and size of docks across six South Carolina counties from the 1950s to 2016. Across our roughly 60-year study period, dock abundance grew by two orders of magnitude, mean length of newly constructed docks doubled, and the cumulative length of docks ballooned from 34 to 560 km. Additionally, we drew on census data interpolated into consistent 2010 tract boundaries to analyze the racial and economic distribution of docks in 1994, 1999, 2011, and 2016. Racial composition, measured as the percentage of a tract’s population that was White, positively correlated with dock abundance in each year. Median household income and dock abundance were only correlated in 2011. Taken together, these metrics indicate the growing desire for direct estuary access, however, that access does not appear to be equally spread across racial groups. Because docks enhance estuarine access and demarcate private property, our study provides longitudinal insights into environmental justice concerns related to disparate private property ownership. We found a persistent correlation between the racial characteristics of an area and dock abundance, strongly indicating that White South Carolinians have had disproportionately greater private water access for the past two decades.
Despite the ubiquity of coastal infrastructure, it is unclear what factors drive its placement, particularly for water access infrastructure (WAI) that facilitates entry to coastal ecosystems such as docks, piers, and boat landings. The placement of WAI has both ecological and social dimensions, and certain segments of coastal populations may have differential access to water. In this study, we used an environmental justice framework to assess how public and private WAI in South Carolina, USA are distributed with respect to race and income. Using publicly available data from State agencies and the US Census Bureau, we mapped the distribution of these structures across the 301 km of the South Carolina coast. Using spatially explicit analyses with high resolution, we found that census block groups (CBGs) with lower income are more likely to contain public WAI, but racial composition has no effect. Private docks showed the opposite trends, as the
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