Ecosystem Services Community Case Study & Structured Decision Making StoryMaps
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About the StoryMaps
EPA has created a pair of StoryMaps that work together to showcase real-world examples of U.S. communities that have applied ecosystem services and structured decision making (SDM) concepts to address community resilience issues.
The StoryMaps take viewers on a tour around the U.S. to communities where ecological and community resilience issues have prompted local leaders and community members to prioritize ecosystem services in their decision-making.
The StoryMaps offer practical strategies users can apply in their own municipalities to make decisions with a focus on collective well-being of community members and sustainability of all services.
View the StoryMaps
- Community Case Studies: Practical Applications of Ecosystem Services and Structured Decision Making tells the story of communities across the U.S. that have worked with EPA to address diverse community challenges using SDM concepts. This StoryMap uses maps, diagrams, and photos to highlight unique elements of each community’s SDM process and summarizes the results of several EPA studies on community decision making.
- Structured Decision Making: Increasing Community Resilience explains the six-step SDM process and provides guidance for its use. Each section of the StoryMap provides details about a different step of the SDM process, supported by case study examples from across the U.S.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is structured decision making?
Structured decision making (SDM) is a dynamic, step-by-step approach to community decision making that considers stakeholders and their values as an integral part of framing the decision and prioritizing solutions. Across many U.S. communities, using SDM has enabled federal, state, and local stakeholders, community partners, and other interested participants to improve the resilience outcomes for their communities.
Who should use the SDM process?
The SDM process can be used by public agencies, municipal planners, natural resource managers, local leaders, community members and others to make decisions that improve resilience outcomes for their communities.
What are the six steps of the SDM process?
- Clarifying the decision context: Ecosystem services can help clarify the potential impacts of an issue on natural resources together with their spatial and temporal extent based on supply and delivery of those services and help identify beneficiaries for inclusion as stakeholders in the deliberative process.
- Defining objectives and performance measures: Ecosystem services may directly represent stakeholder objectives or may be means toward achieving other objectives.
- Creating alternatives: Ecosystem services can bring to light creative alternatives for achieving other social, economic, health, or general well-being objectives.
- Estimating consequences: Ecosystem services assessments can implement ecological production functions and ecological benefits functions to link decision alternatives to stakeholder objectives.
- Considering trade-offs: The decision process should consider ecosystem services objectives alongside other kinds of objectives (e.g., social, economic) that may or may not be related to ecosystem conditions.
- Implementing and monitoring: Monitoring after a decision is implemented can help determine whether the incorporation of ecosystem services leads to measurable benefits, or what levels of ecosystem function are needed for meaningful change. An evaluation of impacts on ecosystem services from past decisions can provide a learning opportunity to adapt future decisions.
What can the StoryMaps help me learn or do?
These StoryMaps can help users:
- Summarize and provide examples of the SDM process, including both formal and informal application of concepts and approaches.
- Understand options and variations for implementing SDM to improve community cohesion and resilience outcomes for a wide variety of communities and decision-making contexts.
- Provide concrete and relatable examples of community decisions that may benefit from a SDM approach and focus on ecosystem services.
- Find resources and tools that can be applied directly for community engagement in decision making.
- Learn about ecological and community questions and issues facing numerous communities around the country, as well as mitigation approaches.
- Better understand the connection between the quality of a natural resource and the experience of someone interacting with that resource.
- Find information about the importance of specific ecosystem services to each of the featured communities and better understand the benefits the area’s natural resources provide.
- Connect with environmental professionals, academicians, and emergency management staff to explain how a community can work together to maximize ecosystem services, maintain a vibrant economy, and a high sense of well-being.
Technical Contacts
- Richard Fulford ([email protected])
- Leah Sharpe ([email protected])