Geology topics

Len M. Hunt

Publications and source records attributed to Len M. Hunt.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2026

Preface

Despite more than 50 years of research into the human dimensions of recreational f isheries, there is no textbook to present the theoretical grounding, operationalisation, and interpretation of the most elemental social components involved in fisheries management – namely, outcomes and trade-offs, behaviours (and antecedents or predictors of it), and the relationships among actors (fishers, f isher groups, managers, and management organisations). The objective of this edited volume is to reduce this knowledge gap. The book comprises four parts: (I) recreational fisheries as social-ecological systems, (II) disciplinary views of f ishers’ behaviours and outcomes, (III) engagement of fishers to support effective social science, and (IV) interdisciplinary integration for recreational fisheries management. Part I provides the general motivation for an interdisciplinary approach to understand recreational fisheries as coupled systems. Part II provides the foundations of various social science disciplines and highlights linkages and differences in the underlying theories and concepts used. Part III describes various qualitative and quantitative methods to study the social aspects of recreational fisheries in more detail, and Part IV suggests approaches to achieve standardisation and integration of different data streams, including how to link social and ecological data. The book chapters have been written by leading scholars of recreational fisheries science, involving social and economic scientists, political ecologists, and fisheries ecologists with a tradition in either applying human dimensions or working towards integration.

Book chapter↗

USGS2025

Complexity and integration of recreational fisheries

Recreational fisheries are interconnected, complex, adaptive systems characterized by multiple direct and indirect interactions among ecological and human subsystems. This is important for many reasons, including that feedbacks between the social and ecological dimensions lead to difficult-to-predict, often entirely unexpected, outcomes and because many management and governance systems have multiple objectives that can involve social (e.g. fisher satisfaction), economic (e.g. license revenue), and ecological (e.g. fish conservation) dimensions. Embracing a social-ecological-system perspective can usher in an improved era of recreational fisheries science and management. Interdisciplinary approaches that unite experts across disciplines (e.g. social and ecological sciences) to create a unique theoretical, conceptual, and methodological identity are needed to gather crucial information from recreational fishers, quantify and predict fisher behaviours and outcomes from these behaviours, and integrate these findings into fisheries management. In this chapter, we lay the conceptual foundation for recreational fisheries as coupled social-ecological systems that are also complex and adaptive, and discuss the interdisciplinary approach to operationalize this book’s vision.

Book chapter↗

USGS2025

Best practices for understanding recreational fishers

In this closing chapter of our edited book, we summarize what we believe are best practices for understanding recreational fishers. Fishers are an integral part of the recreational fishery social-ecological system, and we emphasize the importance of placing them in that context. We begin with an overview of the process of developing a project and conclude with some broad suggestions for standardising approaches to gather data from and about fishers, mainly focusing on social science methods. Throughout, we emphasize tactics to promote the development of inter- and transdisciplinary tools and processes, as a means of more fully understanding the full social-ecological system. This chapter draws from methodological details and suggestions developed throughout this book; we describe how they work together but point the reader to these specific chapters to further understand how to build interdisciplinarity into research and management.

Book chapter↗

USGS2016

Identifying alternate pathways for climate change to impact inland recreational fishers

Fisheries and human dimensions literature suggests that climate change influences inland recreational fishers in North America through three major pathways. The most widely recognized pathway suggests that climate change impacts habitat and fish populations (e.g., water temperature impacting fish survival) and cascades to impact fishers. Climate change also impacts recreational fishers by influencing environmental conditions that directly affect fishers (e.g., increased temperatures in northern climates resulting in extended open water fishing seasons and increased fishing effort). The final pathway occurs from climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts (e.g., refined energy policies result in higher fuel costs, making distant trips more expensive). To address limitations of past research (e.g., assessing climate change impacts for only one pathway at a time and not accounting for climate variability, extreme weather events, or heterogeneity among fishers), we encourage researchers to refocus their efforts to understand and document climate change impacts to inland fishers.

Fisheries↗