Greetings all, on behalf of co-authors, I’m glad to share this publication. This work is an important layer for creating a spatially/temporally explicit assessment
for cetacean ship collisions around this busy area. Please email me for pdf’s if you cannot access.
Best, Ellen
Caitlin M. Jensen, Ellen Hines, Barbara A. Holzman, Thomas J. Moore, Jaime Jahncke & Jessica V. Redfern (2015)
Spatial and Temporal Variability in Shipping Traffic Off San Francisco, California, Coastal Management, 43:6, 575-588
To link to this article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2015.1086947
Shipping traffic poses a worldwide threat to many large whale species. Spatially
explicit risk assessments are increasingly being used as a tool to minimize ship-strike
risk. These assessments often use static representations of shipping patterns. We used
Automatic Identification System data to quantify variability in cargo shipping traffic
entering and exiting San Francisco Bay, which contains some of the busiest ports in
the United States, at three temporal resolutions: (1) before and after implementation
of the California Air Resources Board’s Ocean-Going Vessels Fuel Rule, (2) among
seasons, and (3) day versus night. We used the nonparametric Mood’s Median test to
compare median daily distance traveled because the data were not normally
distributed and the variance was not homogeneous. Our analyses show that shipping
traffic off San Francisco is dynamic at both interannual and daily temporal
resolutions, but that traffic was fairly consistent among the seasons considered. Our
analyses emphasize the importance of economic and regulatory drivers on interannual
shipping traffic patterns. Shipping traffic is expected to continue to change off the U.S.
West Coast and to increase globally. These changes in shipping traffic could have
implications for the risk of ships striking whales and should be included in risk
assessments.
Keywords:
Automatic Identification System (AIS), cargo ships, geographic information
system (GIS), San Francisco Bay, ship strike
Ellen Hines, PhD
Associate Director & Professor of Geography
Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies
San Francisco State University
3150 Paradise Drive
Tiburon, CA 94920 USA
1 415 338 3512
Fax: 1 415 338 6243
http://rtc.sfsu.edu/research/in_hines.html