Evaluating Trade-Offs

Ecosystems services—the benefits that natural ecosystems provide to society—are increasingly the focus of land management decisions. Critical for these decisions is the consideration of social values; for example, how do stakeholders value ecological performance? How do they value one service relative to another? Are the ecosystem service benefits equitable?

Because communities, local and national regulators, and federal agencies will all bring different priorities and values to management decisions, standard approaches for incorporating social values into management and policy decisions, and for evaluating ecological verses social trade‐offs of these decision need to be developed. This Pursuit will convene a working group to address this issue, and the results will be synthesized into a set of ‘best practices’ guidelines. These guidelines then be made available to partners in governmental and nongovernmental agencies.