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Item Assessing the Effectiveness of Large‑Scale Environmental Restoration: Challenges and Opportunities(Estuaries and Coasts, 2022-11-21) Greening, Holly; Heck, Kenneth; McKinney, Larry; Diefenderfer, Heida; Boynton, Walter; Kleiss, Barbara; Mishra, Deepak; George II, Albert; Carl Kraft, Bethany; Kling, Cathy; Windecker, LauraA recent National Academies consensus report addresses monitoring and assessment of cumulative effects of large-scale and multiple restoration projects within the context of long-term environmental change. Fines and penalties from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) have supported hundreds of restoration projects at spatial scales not often possible in the past. Here, the report committee members and staff provide personal reflections from our time working on the study. We found that gaps in data collection, issues with data accessibility, and a lack of synthesis and analysis are hindering the ability to answer a basic question: What are the impacts of these many restoration efforts on improving ecosystem health and productivity in the GoM at the regional and Gulf wide scale? Restoration efforts are occurring in environments where many trends are changing and exhibiting higher variability than in the past, suggesting that previously successful restoration practices may no longer be adequate to compensate for the effects of environmental changes and variability. Our proposed approach to these challenges includes employing emerging monitoring technologies; using conceptual models; devising an adaptive management framework; rethinking restoration outcome goals; assessing cumulative effects; and undertaking rigorous synthesis and analysis of existing information on long-term environmental trends and restoration efforts. Restoration scientists and practitioners working in the GoM have an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate large-scale environmental recovery if advances in monitoring, synthesis, assessment, and action are taken quickly. We are cautiously optimistic that, with mid-course adjustments, continued progress toward large-scale environmental recovery is possible.Item A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Health(The Authors, 2019-03-25) Harwell, Mark A.; Gentile, John H.; McKinney, Larry D.; Tunnell Jr., John W.; Dennison, William C.; Kelsey, R Heath; Stanzel, Kiersten M.; Stunz, Gregory W.; Withers, Kim; Tunnell, JaceOver the past century, the environment of the Gulf of Mexico has been significantly altered and impaired by extensive human activities. A national commitment to restore the Gulf was finally initiated in response to the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Consequently, there is a critical need for an assessment framework and associated set of indicators that can characterize the health and sustainability of an ecosystem having the scale and complexity of the Gulf. The assessment framework presented here was developed as an integration of previous ecological risk– and environmental management–based frameworks for assessing ecosystem health. It was designed to identify the natural and anthropogenic drivers, pressures, and stressors impinging on ecosystems and ecosystem services, and the ecological conditions that result, manifested as effects on valued ecosystem components. Four types of societal and ecological responses are identified: reduction of pressures and stressors, remediation of existing stressors, active ecosystem restoration, and natural ecological recovery. From this conceptual framework are derived the specific indicators to characterize ecological condition and progress toward achieving defined ecological health and sustainability goals. Additionally, the framework incorporates a hierarchical structure to communicate results to a diversity of audiences, from research scientists to environmental managers and decision makers, with the level of detail or aggregation appropriate for each targeted audience. Two proof-of-concept studies were conducted to test this integrated assessment and decision framework, a prototype Texas Coastal Ecosystems Report Card, and a pilot study on enhancing rookery islands in the Mission-Aransas Reserve, Texas, USA. This Drivers–Pressures–Stressors–Condition–Responses (DPSCR4) conceptual framework is a comprehensive conceptual model of the coupled human–ecological system. Much like its predecessor, the ecological risk assessment framework, the DPSCR4 conceptual framework can be tailored to different scales of complexity, different ecosystem types with different stress regimes, and different environmental settings. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2019;15:544–564. © 2019 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)Item The Gulf of Mexico: An Overview(Oceanography, 2021-06-03) McKinney, Larry D.; Shepherd, John G.; Wilson, Charles A.; Hogarth, William T.; Chanton, Jeff; Murawski, Steven A.; Sandifer, Paul A.; Sutton, Tracey; Yoskowitz, David W.; Wowk, Katya; Özgökmen, Tamay M.; Joye, Samantha B.; Caffey, RexThe Gulf of Mexico is a place where the environment and the economy both coexist and contend. It is a resilient large marine ecosystem that has changed in response to many drivers and pressures that we are only now beginning to fully understand. Coastlines of the states that border the Gulf comprise about half of the US southern seaboard, and those states are capped by the vast Midwest. The Gulf drains most of North America and is both an economic keystone and an unintended waste receptacle. It is a renowned resource for seafood markets, recreational fishing, and beach destinations and an international maritime highway fueled by vast, but limited, hydrocarbon reserves. Today, more is known about the Gulf than was imagined possible only a few years ago. That gain in knowledge was driven by one of the greatest environmental disasters of this country’s history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The multitude of response actions and subsequent funded research significantly contributed to expanding our knowledge and, perhaps most importantly, to guiding the work needed to restore the damage from that oil spill. Funding for further work should not wait for the next major disaster, which will be too late; progress must be maintained to ensure that the Gulf continues to be resilient.Item Ten Years of Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Projects Since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill(PNAS, 2022-09-16) Diefenderfer, Heida L.; McKinney, Larry D.; Boynton, Walter R.; Heck Jr., Kenneth L.; Kleiss, Barbara A.; Mishra, Deepak R.; Greening, Holly; George II, Albert A.; Carl Kraft, Bethany A.; Kling, Catherine L.In 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Gulf Research Program created the Committee on Long-Term Environmental Trends in the Gulf of Mexico. Our committee was tasked to consider the synthesis of additive, synergistic, and antagonistic cumulative effects resulting from ecosystem restoration following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. This anticipated multidecadal restoration was made possible by dedicated settlement monies, distributed over the past decade as governed by the RESTORE Act of 2012 and other legal vehicles, which are today approaching one-half spent or committed. Thus, in our view, it is important to take stock of progress and, looking forward, to make recommendations regarding strategies for evaluation and management.Item Universities Should Not Abandon Cuba(2017-12-05) McKinney, LarryLarry McKinney, Executive Director Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies Texas A&M University Corpus-Christi I traveled to Cuba on November 14, 2017 only a few days after the US State Department released new restriction for travel to Cuba. My purpose was to sign a cooperative research agreement with the University of Havana. My last trip there was in July to host a joint workshop with the Center for Marine Research (CIM). I could tell no difference, either coming or going between the two travels. I did not expect any. What was different was university response in the USA. My university system's risk assessment office put a hold on my travel and required my president to review and sign-off a second time, specifically because it was Cuba. I received all sorts of dire warnings and safety instruction. It was an abundance of caution, appreciated, but annoying and nothing I had to deal with in the previous three Cuba trips of 2017. Any number of colleagues from other universities questioned the safety of going there, understandable because of recent events. I was more disturbed when I heard from a Cuban colleague that a major New England university that had supported student exchanges in Cuba for more than twenty years had just canceled the program. I hope this is not a general trend with US universities. The general retreat from improving relations with Cuba is disappointing but fortunately, it has not targeted cooperative science efforts and education exchange. My hope is that this was deliberate, a recognition of the value in maintaining these relationships. As a marine scientist from an institute that has worked extensively in Cuba over the last ten years, I have seen the value of positive engagement as opposed to isolation and embargo. Science diplomacy, based on the pursuit of common conservation goals, has been a key element in advancing shared interests through difficult times. These efforts have been instrumental in sustaining contact when other possibilities have closed. My hope is that science will continue to fill that role in the face of a retreating policy of engagement. Despite decades of lingering restrictions, science and research have been an effective means of communicating with our neighbor, less than 100 miles to the south. On issues spanning disaster preparedness and response, fisheries health, the spread of diseases and more, there has been and will continue to be a real need for cooperation. The relatively recent agreement between the AAAS and the Cuban Academy of Sciences signed in April of 2014 to advance scientific cooperation is one of several that continue to build positive relationships and advance science diplomacy. Recently the National Academy of Sciences Gulf Research Program joined with the Harte Research Institute to help develop the next generation of Gulf scholars. The program brings together promising graduate students from around the Gulf of Mexico, including Cuba, to promote international cooperation and to foster a network of future Gulf research leaders. These efforts can only be successful if students and researchers are allowed, and most importantly, encouraged to participate. I do understand that the world is a far more dangerous place than it may have once been. No university wants to put either their staff or students at risk. I do not think Cuba represents any greater risk now, than before the new travel requirements. What we do risk is the significant progress that we have made over many years of productive science diplomacy between our two countries. Derailing that progress would be a tragedy.