Grantee Research Project Results

2019 Progress Report: Integrating Human Wellbeing and Ecosystem Services into Near Term Action Planning in the Puget Sound

EPA Grant Number: R836946
Title: Integrating Human Wellbeing and Ecosystem Services into Near Term Action Planning in the Puget Sound
Investigators: Biedenweg, Kelly
Institution: Oregon State University
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: August 1, 2017 through July 31, 2019 (Extended to July 31, 2021)
Project Period Covered by this Report: August 1, 2018 through July 31,2019
Project Amount: $399,831
RFA: Integrating Human Health and Well-Being with Ecosystem Services (2016) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Human Health

Objective:

The explicit objectives of this research are to:

1. Conduct Community-Engaged Cumulative Impacts Assessments (CIAs)

Create CIAs with a minimum of five and up to nine communities that integrate diverse stressors, ecological endpoints, ecosystem services and HWB impacts. Emphasis will be placed on air and water quality, in addition to other locally-prioritized outcomes.
Summarize generalizable tools, lessons learned, and performance metrics for common strategies that could impact ecosystem services and HWB

2. Empower communities to use these assessments when making decisions

Test whether conducting a CIA alters resource management decisions by local communities
Test the factors under which communities are willing and able to use CIAs that include ecosystem service and HWB considerations in natural resource planning

Progress Summary:

One PhD student awarded candidacy
Two watershed groups with social and ecological data fully entered into DASEES platform to begin structured decision-making process.
Over 30 community partner meetings attended in person
Spatial data for human wellbeing condition throughout the Puget Sound processed and provided to community partners
Pre-‘experiment' data analyzed about community willingness to integrate ecosystem service and human wellbeing data in restoration planning.

Future Activities:

We have requested a one year, no cost extension to continue work through 2021. In the upcoming year (November 2019-2020) we will complete the following activities:

Host three full-day workshops to build regional capacity in structured decision making and the DASEES tool with support of EPA staff member Brian Dyson
Complete four structured decision making processes with four watershed group partners that integrate human wellbeing and ecosystem goals in the selection of priority restoration strategies
Continued participant observation with participating watershed groups
Complete quantitative, spatial analyses of the relationship between environmental governance perceptions in the Puget Sound and various indicators of ecosystem health (air quality, marine and streamwater quality, land cover change, road density, shoreline armoring, among others).
Submit a minimum of five manuscripts for peer-reviewed publication:
1. Cultural practices associated with environmental health – will describe the frequency and variation of specific cultural activities that over nine hundred Puget Sound residents identify as being linked to the environmental health of the region
2. Sense of Place and Shoreline Armoring – will describe the variation in responses to sense of place as they relate to diversity of shoreline armoring extent and type
3. The spatial distribution of environmental governance – will describe the spatial variation and demographic predictors of attitudes about environmental governance in the Puget Sound
4. Social science integration in restoration planning – will present empirical results of cognitive map data collected at two scales of restoration planning (watershed and basin) that demonstrate the factors that practitioners take into consideration when considering the usefulness of social science
5. Puget Sound Sense of Place across demographics – will present quantitative differences across rural/urban, perceived governance, years in the region, and stewardship activity gradients.

Present results at a minimum of three professional meetings

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference – Vancouver, British Columbia, April 2020. Two full sessions: one, led by postdoc, lessons learned from the process of integrating human wellbeing and ecosystem service data for restoration planning; the second, led by PhD student, on empirical relationships between human wellbeing and ecosystem services in the Salish Sea. Support is provided through this award for our community partners to attend and present in the first session. 2. International Symposium on Society and Resource Management – Cairns, Australia, June 2020. Two presentations (one by postdoc, one by PhD student)
National Conference for Ecosystem Restoration – Portland, OR, August 2020. One presentation led by PhD student.

Prepare for “post” process data collection about perceptions of social-ecological science integration for human wellbeing and ecosystem service management

Journal Articles:

No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 20 publications for this project

Supplemental Keywords:

Vital Signs, Indicators, Community-based research, social-ecological systems

Relevant Websites:

Biedenweg Lab Group Exit

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.