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Transferability and Utility of Practical Strategies for Community Decision Making: Results from a Coordinated Case Study Assessment
Citation:
Fulford, R., T. Canfield, T. H. Dewitt, M. Harwell, J. Hoffman, R. McKane, L. Sharpe, K. Williams, AND S. H. Yee. Transferability and Utility of Practical Strategies for Community Decision Making: Results from a Coordinated Case Study Assessment. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-23/068, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
This report provides guidance on application of an ecosystem services assessment framework to support community decision making. It includes information and entry points for new users and focuses on transferability to new communities and novel issues. This report will assist communities in application of ecosystem services assessment to improve sustainability of decision making.
Description:
The concept of Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) explicitly connects ecosystem services to the people that benefit from them. This report presents a case study application of practical strategies for incorporating FEGS, and more broadly ecosystem services, into the decision-making process. Doing so helps decision makers better engage all stakeholders, make a complicated discussion easier to understand through an organizational framework, and directly relate outcomes to benefits by using FEGS-based measures of change. The goal was to look for common elements across a suite of case studies in different regions of the country and dealing with different issues so to inform the transfer and use of these practical strategies in elsewhere. Whether a decision process is in early or late stages, or whether a process includes informal or formal decision analysis, there are multiple points where ecosystem services concepts can be integrated. This report is centered on Structured Decision Making (SDM) as an organizing framework to illustrate the role ecosystem services can play in a values-focused decision-process.