Downscaling a human well-being index for environmental management and environmental justice applications in Puerto Rico

Yee, Susan H.; Paulukonis, Elizabeth A.; Buck, Kyle D.

doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2020.102231

Cited by 12 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The U.S. fifty state HWBI [ 23 ] was recently adapted to Puerto Rico municipios (county-equivalent; [ 34 ]) and census tracts [ 36 ] by substituting Puerto Rican data to calculate indicators for each well-being domain. Here, the same process is followed to calculate indictors for economic, ecosystem, and social services for Puerto Rico.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table 1. Metrics used to describe each indicator within each HWBI domain (modified from, [34,36]). Number of years of available data from 2000-2017 is given in parentheses; data sources are provided as footnotes.…”

Section: Human Well-being Domains and Services Scoresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the original HWBI methodology [23,24,34], downscaled (tract-scale) data for each year were then used to calculate yearly aggregate indicator, service, and domain scores for each tract from 2000-2017. Metrics are normalized to reduce the influence of extreme outliers and standardized [36], which uses (Step 1) the relationship between county-scale data and tract-scale data to generate corrected tract-scale data as input into (Step 2) relationships between county-scale metrics to (Step 3) predict missing tract-scale data. Set 1 metrics are available at both geographic scales; Set 2 metrics are available only at the coarser scale.…”

Section: Ecosystem Service: Indicator: Metricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Predictive accuracy of down-scaling was evaluated by examining correlations (mean Pearson's r) between known tract-scale values and predicted tract-scale values for metrics available at the tract-scale, and between known county-scale values and predicted county-scale values for all metrics. Well-being domain diagnostics were derived from the analysis in [36] for comparison with service diagnostics developed here.…”

Section: Downscalingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The HWBI domains have been shown through stakeholder engagement workshops to resonate broadly with U.S. communities [ 4 ], and align well with environmental management objectives in Puerto Rico, including human health, public safety, economic and cultural opportunities (e.g., San Juan Bay estuary management plan; [ 17 ]). Spatial interpolation methodologies are applied to fill in missing data and reconcile all data to similar spatial scales [ 35 , 36 ]. Multiple regression and model averaging are used to assess the relationships between economic, ecosystem, and social services and the elements of human well-being.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contributions of Ecosystem Services to Human Well-Being in Puerto Rico

Yee

2020

Sustainability

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Ecosystem services, including availability of greenspace, clean air, and clean water, can have benefits to human well-being, but their relative importance compared to economic or social services is often overlooked. In Puerto Rico, for example, improving community well-being, including economic and cultural opportunities, human health, and safety, are often overarching goals of environmental management decisions, but the degree to which improvements in ecological condition and provision of ecosystem services could impact local communities is complicated by wide variation in social and economic conditions. This study quantifies and maps neighborhood-scale indicators of human well-being and ecosystem services for Puerto Rico to better understand the degree to which ecosystem services provisioning, alongside co-occurring social and economic services, explains variability in a number of indicators of human well-being. In Puerto Rico, variability in indicators of human well-being were predominately explained by economic services related to accumulating income and personal savings, and social services, including availability of family services, healthcare services, and access to communication technology. Despite the large explanatory power of economic and social services, however, the analysis detected that substantial portions of well-being, in particular education and human health, could be explained by variability in ecosystem services over space and time, especially availability of greenspace. Linking ecosystem services to multivariate elements of human well-being can serve to complement more traditional community planning or environmental management efforts by helping identify potential unintended consequences or overlooked benefits of decisions.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Human Well-being Domains and Services Scoresmentioning

confidence: 99%