Mapping Forest Values, Services, and Threats

Developed a collaborative decision-making tool with ESRI Story Maps to promote conservation efforts in MN, WI, and MI forests for our clients, The Nature Conservancy and the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Landscape Conservation Cooperative.

"Supporting Conservation and Decision-Making in the Northwoods: Mapping Forest Values, Services, and Threats" Master's project, University of Michigan

Land managers and resource and conservation professionals across political and organizational boundaries (e.g. state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, private landowners) often lack a common framework for planning and coordinated decision-making on a regional scale. We created and implemented such a framework and demonstrated its application through Story Maps, an interactive web-based communication tool. Story Maps facilitate collective understanding and decision-making by displaying interactive maps and spatial data with narrative text and multimedia. We developed a framework for coordinated development of Story Maps, integrating both the Ecosystem Services and Human Well-Being frameworks used by conservation planners in order to understand the following: (1) how people value the Northwoods forest ecosystem of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota; and (2) threats to these values. For this pilot study, we used our framework to map three human well-being values and threats to those values across the Northwoods region of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The three values included forest products sector jobs, water quality, and non-consumptive recreational experiences in nature (outdoor recreation). Each value was explored in a story map designed to communicate through spatial indicators, descriptive text, and graphics the extent and distribution of values and threats.


Principal Investigator: William S. Currie, University of Michigan
Client: Doug Pearsall, The Nature Conservancy