Understanding how people value ecosystem goods and services can provide important information to managers and planners. Marine protected area valuations often focus on marketed goods and services. For many traditional fisherfolk, however, non-marketed ecosystem services are critically important inputs to their wellbeing. Using discrete choice experiments (DCEs), we quantify the...
It is well documented that microplastics and semi-synthetic particles (<5 mm) pervade the marine environment, with their ingestion by marine fauna eliciting global concern. While fishes exposed to microparticles in a laboratory setting have exhibited both sub-lethal and lethal effects, the diversity in material, morphology, and size of these contaminants...
Perhaps the most undervalued, yet critically important ecosystem services are related to socio-cultural values tied to the non-material benefits that arise from human-ecosystem relationships, such as bequest. Bequest values linked to natural ecosystems can be particularly significant for indigenous communities, whose livelihoods and cultures are often closely tied to ecological...
Microplastics are widely distributed in aquatic environments. The term ‘microplastics’ encompasses a wide array of particles with unique polymer constituents, morphologies, and sources, such as automobile tire tread. Tire wear particles (TWP) can end up in waterways near densely populated municipalities, where they can interact with aquatic biota. Studying the...
Microplastics (<5mm diameter) are present in a considerable number of marine and aquatic species. Understanding which species, the global spatial distribution, and what quantities of microplastics are present is extremely important for understanding the potential impacts they could have on recreationally important organisms and for the assessment of risk. We...
Sea otters act as valuable indicators of ecosystem health and consume prey items that contain anthropogenic microparticles, including microplastics. Microplastic ingestion can exert a wide range of deleterious effects depending on the organism and plastic type. We investigated the ingestion of microparticles by wild sea otters (Enhydra lutris) in Alaska...
Microplastics (<5mm) are a ubiquitous environmental pollutant that have the potential to cause significant harm in many fish species. Therefore, understanding the quantities at which they are being consumed by living organisms is crucial for characterizing risk. There are currently gaps in the microplastic literature regarding microplastic data from finfish...
Following their extirpation due to the maritime fur trade, northern sea otter (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) reintroduction in the 1960s has facilitated their recolonization in southeast Alaska. Sea otters are now sympatric with wolves (Canis lupus), which are widespread in southeast Alaska, and a colonizing coyote population (Canis latrans). Recent studies...
The notion of a normal number and the Normal Number Theorem date back over 100 years. Émile Borel first stated his Normal Number Theorem in 1909. Despite their seemingly basic nature, normal numbers are still engaging many mathematicians to this day. In this paper, we provide a reinterpretation of the...
Animal welfare is an essential component of agricultural production and animal use in teaching and research. However, defining animal welfare is intrinsically difficult because of how history and societal values and perceptions have shaped the term. Animal welfare encompasses three main ideas: physical well-being, normal affective/emotional states, and the ability...