Collaborative Learning and Land Use Tools to Support Community Based Ecosystem Management

Sanford, Maine

In an ideal world, all land use planners would be able to predict how development would change their community economically, ecologically, and aesthetically. They could understand and agree on a project’s implications for air and water quality. They would forecast how their decisions would affect other communities in the watershed.

In the real world, land use decisions are made by multiple stakeholders with divergent perspectives from different institutions—a situation that hinders the application of scientific findings and tools that could foster the adoption of an ecosystem-based approach to development.

With CICEET support, this project team from the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) is developing a method to overcome these barriers. Building on a previous CICEET grant, they are using collaborative learning—a process that facilitates environmental decision-making among diverse stakeholders—to apply geospatial and visualization tools to the development of a conservation and land use plan for Sanford, Maine.

Using Sanford’s experience as a case study, the team will develop and pilot a regional training on the use of ecosystem based management tools for land use planning. The training will be adapted for various stakeholder groups, including GIS program managers, and municipal, state and federal government staff involved in land use decision-making.