Publications by authors named "Kelly Dunning"

Conservation faces a chronic shortage of resources, including time, funding, mental capacity, and human capital. Efforts to make the expenditure of these resources more efficient should, therefore, support more equitable and effective conservation prioritization. To achieve this, it is necessary to ensure the integration of the knowledge and perceptions of local stakeholders into larger scale conservation decisions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Coral reefs are highly important ecosystems providing habitat for biodiverse marine life and numerous benefits for humans. However they face immense risks from climate change. To date, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) climate models have aided global discussions on possible policy responses to adapt to change, but tailored climate projections at a useful scale for environmental managers are often prohibitively expensive to produce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Quick-response research during a time of crisis is important because time-sensitive findings can inform urgent decision-making, even with limited research budgets. This research, a National Science Foundation-funded Rapid Response Research (RAPID), explores the United States (U.S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The study investigates the unexplored link between childhood socioeconomic status and adult subjective wellbeing using data from a field survey of 568 rural residents from poor areas in China. This study focuses on exploring the relationship between childhood socioeconomic status, hope, sense of control, and adult subjective wellbeing using a structural equation model. Results indicated that hope and sense of control mediated the links between childhood socioeconomic status and adult subjective wellbeing, revealing that hope and sense of control may buffer the negative impacts of childhood poverty experiences on subjective wellbeing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The year 2020 marks a crucial deadline for signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the most important global agreement for biodiversity conservation, which requires nations to meet conservation targets. Managers and decision-makers need a better understanding of the policy systems established to meet conservation targets in order to inform post-2020 CBD policy implementation. This paper compares two policy systems for implementing marine protected areas (MPAs) which protect a threatened source of biodiversity, coral reefs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is an increasing awareness of microplastics within the global problem of marine plastic pollution. In 2018, small plastic pellets or "nurdles" were observed on the beaches of Corpus Christi, Texas. A citizen science project, "Nurdle Patrol," was established by the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve to monitor the presence of nurdles, with volunteer interest enabling this project to expand across the Gulf of Mexico region.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF