Property Rights and the Management of Multiple Use Fisheries

Arguments in favor of adopting rights-based management strategies have been developed primarily in the context of commercial fisheries and have focused on increasing the profitability of catcher vessel operations and reducing the incentive to deplete fish stocks. Relatively little attention has been given to the effects that alternative management regimes could have on the profitability of processing and support service businesses, consumer surplus, or to the interface between commercial fishing, sport fishing, and other use and nonuse demands for fishery resources. Although there is often congruence among users with respect to stock management and rule enforcement objectives, other objectives are mutually incompatible. This paper begins with a simple conceptual analysis of the effects of alternative regimes for management of a charter-based recreational fishery on the magnitude of net benefits in the sport fishery and in an associated commercial fishery. A theoretical framework for identifying the optimal commercial-sport allocation and the optimal sustainable yield is developed in the subsequent section. The final section reports the results of an empirically based comparative static simulation of commercial and charter-based sport fishing for halibut off Alaska

PARTICIPATION DECISIONS, ANGLER WELFARE, AND THE REGIONAL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF SPORTFISHING

We link a stochastic binary choice model of individual decisions to participate in the marine sport fisheries in Cook Inlet, Alaska, with a simulation- based sample enumeration procedure for aggregating estimates of individual angler welfare and a regionally adjusted zip code-level input-output model of regional economic activity. The result is a behaviorally based model for predicting changes in angler welfare and regional economic activity occasioned by changes in the demand for sportfishing that arise from changes in trip costs or the expected number, size, or mix of species caught. The advantages of this approach are that: changes in angler participation are determined by variables that are observable, predictable, or subject to management control; participation reflects declining marginal utility, and substitution and complementary effects across trip attributes; estimates of changes in aggregate angler welfare and changes in regional economic impacts are derived from changes in individual participation probabilities.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Quantitative determination of modal content and morphological properties of coal sulphides by digital image analysis as a tool to check their flotation behaviour

An efficient depression of coal sulphides in the flotation process means a healthier environment and may be essential for the sustainability of a coal operation. Nitric and ferric oxidative pre-treatment of coal pyrite have been tested to improve pyrite depression, and the results are compared with those from the process of raw, not pre-treated coal. The removal indexes point to nitric pre-treatment as the best, but depression is still low. The microscopic study of feed and products, coupled to Digital Image Analysis (DIA) in all the cases, provide important clues to understand the behaviour of pyrite, which can be related to quantitative parameters, such as the exposition ratio (ER), and to qualified interpretation of the textures. Pyrite shows in the first float an unexpected hydrophobic behaviour, which is due to its occurrence as framboids, or porous particles which may be intergrown with organic matter and behave as coal. In general, the flotation results can be predicted from the DIA-data, e.g. depression of liberated pyrite into the tailings, increased by oxidative pre-treatments by 300% (ferric) or by > 400% (nitric); or concentration of middlings with lower pyrite ER in the floats. DIA is an efficient tool to obtain some important quantitative informations which otherwise would be inaccessible (e.g. the morphological data on > 1,000,000 pyrite particles for this study), and its use should be enhanced to check ore processing

Comparison of Coincident Rayleigh-Scatter and Sodium Resonance Lidar Temperature Measurements from the Mesosphere-Lower-Thermosphere Region

There are relatively few instruments that have the capabilities to make near continuous measurements of the mesosphere-lower-thermosphere (MLT) region. Rayleigh scatter and resonance lidars, particularly sodium resonance lidar, have been the two dominant ground-based techniques for acquiring mesosphere and MLT vertical temperature profiles, respectively, for more than two decades. With these measurements, the dynamics (gravity waves, tides) and long-term temperature trends (upper atmosphere cooling) of the MLT region can be studied. The Utah State University (USU; 41.7º N, 111.8º W) campus hosts a unique upper atmospheric observatory which houses both a high-power, large-aperture Rayleigh lidar and a sodium resonance Doppler lidar. For the first time, we will present coordinated, night-time averaged temperatures, overlapping in observational range (80-110 km), from the two lidars. This overlap has been achieved through the relocation of the sodium lidar from Colorado State University to USU’s campus and through upgrades to the existing USU Rayleigh lidar which elevated its observational range from 45-90 km to 70-115 km. The comparison of the two sets of temperature measurements is important because the two lidar techniques derive temperature profiles using different scattering processes and analysis methods. Furthermore, previous climatological comparisons, between Rayleigh and sodium lidar, [Argall and Sica, 2007] have suggested that significant temperature differences can occur. This comparison aims to explore possible temperature effects from the differences in the two measurement techniques

Regional Distribution of Mesospheric Small‐Scale Gravity Waves During DEEPWAVE

The Deep Propagating Gravity Wave Experiment project took place in June and July 2014 in New Zealand. Its overarching goal was to study gravity waves (GWs) as they propagate from the ground up to ~100 km, with a large number of ground‐based, airborne, and satellite instruments, combined with numerical forecast models. A suite of three mesospheric airglow imagers operated onboard the NSF Gulfstream V (GV) aircraft during 25 nighttime flights, recording the GW activity at OH altitude over a large region (\u3e7,000,000 km2). Analysis of this data set reveals the distribution of the small‐scale GW mean power and direction of propagation. GW activity occurred everywhere and during every flight, even over open oceans with no neighboring tropospheric sources. Over the mountainous regions (New Zealand, Tasmania, isolated islands), mean power reached high values (more than 100 times larger than over the waters), but with a considerable variability. This variability existed from day to day over the same region, but even during the same flight, depending on forcing strength and on the middle atmosphere conditions. Results reveal a strong correlation between tropospheric sources, satellite stratospheric measurements, and mesosphere lower thermosphere airglow observations. The large‐amplitude GWs only account for a small amount of the total (~6%), even though they carry the most momentum and energy. The weaker wave activity measured over the oceans might originate from distance sources (polar vortex, weather fronts), implying that a ducted mechanism helped for their long range propagation

Political Economy and Profit Maximization in the Eastern Bering Sea Fishery for Walleye Pollock

Despite their apparent economic benefits to harvesters, Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) have only been adopted in three U.S. fisheries: Mid-Atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog; South Atlantic wreckfish; and, North Pacific halibut and sablefish. During the 1996 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, Congress temporarily blocked implementation of additional IFQ programs in U.S. fisheries. This Congressional action led directly to the emergence of a new institutional structure, the fishing cooperative. Cooperatives offer the advantage of eliminating production externalities that may remain under an IFQ program with relatively large owner classes. Development of IFQ programs appears to be increasingly overwhelmed by the proliferation of both equity concerns and seemingly interminable rent-seeking behavior—both issues that can effectively block adoption of IFQs. By reducing the scope of the equity issues acknowledged, the cooperative alternative narrows the pool of claimants and modifies the behavior of the remainder so as to make implementation more likely. Ironically, while IFQs are widely thought to be best designed at the local/regional level, part of the appeal of the cooperative model is that it appears to shortcut the often-protracted nature of the local/regional political process

Coordinated investigation of mid-latitude upper mesospheric temperature inversion layers and the associated gravity wave forcing by Na lidar and Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper at Logan, Utah (42°N)

Mesospheric inversion layers (MIL) are well studied in the literature but their relationship to the dynamic feature associated with the breaking of atmospheric waves in the mesosphere/lower thermosphere (MLT) region are not well understood. Two strong MIL events (ΔT ~30 K) were observed above 90 km during a 6 day full diurnal cycle Na lidar campaign conducted from 6 August to 13 August Logan, Utah (42°N, 112°W). Colocated Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper observations provided key information on concurrent gravity wave (GW) events and their characteristics during the nighttime observations. The study found both MILs were well correlated with the development and presence of an unstable region ~2 km above the MIL peak altitudes and a highly stable region below, implicating the strengthening of MIL is likely due to the increase of downward heat flux by the enhanced saturation of gravity wave, when it propagates through a highly stable layer. Each MIL event also exhibited distinct features: one showed a downward progression most likely due to tidal-GW interaction, while the peak height of the other event remained constant. During further investigation of atmospheric stability surrounding the MIL structure, lidar measurements indicate a sharp enhancement of the convective stability below the peak altitude of each MIL. We postulate that the sources of these stable layers were different; one was potentially triggered by concurrent large tidal wave activity and the other during the passage of a strong mesospheric bore

Evidence for Horizontal Blocking and Reflection of a Small-Scale Gravity Wave in the Mesosphere

The variations of the horizontal phase velocity of an internal gravity wave, generated by wave “blocking” or “reflection” due to an inhomogeneous wind field, have been predicted theoretically and numerically investigated but had yet to be captured experimentally. In this paper, through a collaborative observation campaign using a sodium (Na) Temperature/Wind lidar and a collocated Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM) at Utah State University (USU), we report the first potential evidence of such a unique gravity wave process. The study shows that a small-scale wave, captured by the AMTM, with initial observed horizontal phase velocity of 37 ± 5 m/s toward the northwest direction, experienced a large and increasing headwind as it was propagating in the AMTM field of view. This resulted in significant deceleration along its initial traveling direction, and it became quasi-stationary before it was “reflected” to the opposite direction at later time. The USU Na lidar measured the horizontal wind and temperature during the event, when the wave was found traveling within a temperature inversion layer and experiencing an increasing headwind relative to the wave. The wind agrees well with the expected value for wave blocking suggested by the wave tracing theory, implying the existence of a large horizontal wind gradient that night near the OH layer altitudes. The study indicates the critical role of horizontal winds and their horizontal gradients in determining propagation in vertical and horizontal directions