Lynnath Beckley

Australia is particularly vulnerable to coastal hazards as 85% of the population lives along the coast and there is growing demand for coastal development. The town of Exmouth in north-western Australia was used as a case study to investigate economic strategies for coastal disaster risk reduction as it typifies expanding coastal development in areas prone to extreme weather events, such as cyclones. The extent to which perceptions of risk of cyclonic storm-surge inundation and flooding influenced the price buyers paid for residential property from 1988-2013 were examined using a Hedonic Price model. This incorporated dwelling variables, proximity to the coast, Cyclone Vance storm-surge levels {4m} and 1-in-100 year flood levels. The analysis indicated that prices did not reflect the real societal cost of risk and the influence of greater coastal amenity over-rode any sensitivity to potential risk by buyers. This study is highly relevant in view of the expansion of residential settlement and industry along the coast of northern Australia and the predicted effects of extreme weather events under climate change scenarios.

People are often attracted to unique natural environments, but what makes them continually return to these locations, especially when considerable time and effort are required to get there? This paper discusses the methods and findings of a research project aimed at identifying and exploring how visitors develop an attachment to the remote Ningaloo Marine Park in north-western Australia. This Marine Park attracts a high percentage of repeat visitors (55%) and in order to determine the complex aspects contributing to this attachment, photo-elicitation was employed. Photo-elicitation is a qualitative technique where participants are asked to take photographs relating to the concept under study, and these are then used as triggers for underlying memories and feelings during a subsequent interview. For this study, participants were provided with digital cameras to take photographs of why they like visiting the Ningaloo Reef and what it was that made them return. Given this remote location and the inability to get photographs developed in reasonable timeframes, digital cameras were used instead of the disposable cameras more commonly used in this type of study. After a few days, the cameras were returned, and photographs uploaded on the researcher’s laptop computer with interviews conducted while viewing the photographs. Over a period of four weeks, during the peak visitor period, 30 participants took over 200 photographs and provided over 15 hours of interview recordings. Key aspects contributing to place attachment included the beauty of the physical environment, reef and marine based activities, social bonding with family and friends and enjoying a challenging though rewarding experience. By using a technique familiar to people on holidays, i.e. taking photographs, a method was invoked that people could engage with easily without the research impinging on their holiday experience.

As pressure on marine protected areas from recreational and tourism use continues to increase, so too does the importance of planning for and managing these experiences. Such experiences are a product of both the social and environmental values of the protected areas and the interaction of these values with visitor activities. Most experiential research has focused on terrestrial and riparian environments with little work undertaken in marine settings (Shafer & Inglis, 2000). This study explored the place attachment expressed by visitors camping adjacent to and recreating in a marine setting, Ningaloo Marine Park. The Ningaloo Marine Park, abutting the north-western coastline of Australia, centres on a 300 km long fringing coral reef. A recent study by Beckley et al. (2008) examined human usage patterns of the Ningaloo Marine Park and identified that 55% of surveyed visitors had visited on a previous occasion and of this group, 44% always stayed at the same location. These results suggest that place attachment may have a strong influence on how visitors behave, what their expectations are and how they might respond to policy and management changes. Place attachment is the overarching concept used to describe an emotional or affective bond between a person and a place (Williams et. al. 1992).

The status of the recreational fishery in the Blackwood Estuary, south-western Australia, was quantitatively assessed via a boat-based creel survey from September 2005 to August 2006. Sampling was stratified by both season and day-type and, in total, was conducted on 144 days over the 12-month period. Daily sampling consisted of a count of number of anglers throughout the estuary (for fishing effort), and surveys of catches by boat-based and shore-based recreational anglers.

The introduction of new, high resolution hyperspectral sensors has led to growing interest in the development of techniques to utilise data from these instruments for mapping the shallow marine environment. The increased spectral resolution of the hyperspectral sensors allows the use of the unique spectral signatures of the individual habitat components to identify these components within the image. Hyperspectral data also allows for the mapping of habitats in shallow areas that are inaccessible to other methods such as hydro-acoustic mapping. The coastal waters surrounding Rottnest Island, Western Australia, provide a unique opportunity to apply hyperspectral imaging techniques in a temperate environment because of the oligotrophic conditions maintained by the Leeuwin Current. The shallow marine benthic habitats of Rottnest Island Reserve have been mapped to a depth of ~15 m, using spectral signatures contained in a library created from in-situ measurements of the dominant habitat components. Three lines of HyMap hyperspectral data flown for the Rottnest Island Reserve in April 2004 were corrected for sunglint, atmospheric effects and the influence of the water column using the Modular Inversion and Processing System which requires no inputs from parameters measured in the field. A decision tree based classification scheme which utilises a range of spectral similarity measures was used to map the different habitat components identified in the bottom reflectance image and the results were validated in the field using SCUBA divers. The shallow subtidal habitats found around Rottnest Island are generally dominated by either bare sand, reef with large macroalgae, such as Ecklonia radiata and Sargas-sum spp., or a number of different seagrass species. These new hyperspectral imaging techniques provide a platform for the mapping of shallow marine benthic habitats over a broad area, at a scale that is relevant to marine planners and managers.

The oligotrophic coastal waters of Western Australia provide a unique opportunity to apply hyperspectral remote sensing techniques. This project aims to use HyMap images of Rottnest Island to create thematic classification maps of the marine benthic habitats for use as a planning tool by managers and planners. This involves building a spectral reflectance library of the dominant benthic substrates, creating a digital elevation model for the island and classifying the images. Preliminary results have revealed that dominant substrates are spectrally separable and that the Krigging interpolation algorithm results in the most accurate digital elevation model.