The EPA Ecosystem Services Tool Selection Portal
The dynamics of any given environmental decision-making context are complicated, including how to consider social-ecological systems connections. Decision support tools designed with a user in mind make it simpler and more natural to integrate science into the decision-making process. This can also help to better facilitate restoring and maintain ecosystems in a robust and resilient condition while providing the environmental benefits (ecosystem services) that people want and need. While an individual ecosystem services assessment tool is developed for a given set of purposes, having access to information about a suite of potential tools can be insightful. A wide range of approaches exist for connecting ecosystem services to a given environmental decision-making context/process. In order of less to more complex, they range from: using best professional judgment; finding examples from other efforts to apply; testing individual tool applications; and using a systematic, decision-tree approach to navigate among potentially relevant ES tools and frameworks applicable to that decision making process. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed a decision-tree approach for a user to navigate the question of how to choose among a suite of ecosystem services assessment tools for three decision contexts: (1) ecological risk assessments; (2) cleanup of contaminated sites; (3) and other (generic) structured decision-making processes. This ecosystem services assessment tool selection navigator was developed with/for the intended user, including developing crosswalks between describing tool functionality and the language of the user for what they require in a tool.