Resource Dimensions services

Our multidimensional economic analyses have been instrumental in guiding the implementation of a variety of land use and resource management policies and programs, economic development projects, and major infrastructure investments projects across the U.S. and abroad. We work to help governments, policy makers, private businesses, and non-profit organizations achieve their goals through meaningful and objective analysis. We deliver analyses that help our clients plan for the future; estimating the effects of proposed project or policy impacts facilitates informed decision making and mitigates potential future problems. Thinking innovatively as we work to solve a range of complex issues, we have lead the field in the use and expansion of new methodologies, such as social capital and ecosystem service valuation, and the use of contingent and discrete choice models. Resource Dimensions’ economists have decades of experience in developing analytical strategies to support market-based policies and incentives, voluntary programs, and public-private partnerships. Areas of expertise include finance, feasibility studies, economic, fiscal and socioeconomic impact analysis, fund development, business planning, market research, demographic studies, and resource economics.

Resource Dimensions’ team of economists, planners, and social and environmental scientists have assisted communities, counties, states, and various agencies in the U.S., Britain and Canada in developing integrated sustainable community planning processes, policies, and decision support tools designed to aid in implementing a spectrum of local and regional projects and programs. Through such efforts, we have developed GIS‐based asset and issue mapping tools, computer‐based decision‐support tools, sustainability matrices, and a range of aids to facilitate diverse stakeholder involvement through collaborative sustainability processes aimed at integrated triple‐bottom line.

With over three decades of experience in the planning and conservation of land, Resource Dimensions partners have helped to lead the charge on the protection of millions of acres of land across the nation, and beyond. Working alongside dozens of public, private and non-profit partners, in more than twenty states across the U.S., we have developed, designed and helped to implement conservation easements, PDR and TDR programs, land acquisitions and exchanges, and the policies and funding programs required to assure long-term security of these agents. From strategic planning, to devising sound policies and customized fund development strategies, we bring a diverse and grounded approach that stems from actual on-the-ground work, and our unique experience in “pushing the envelope” from the teaching and research environment. We understand the value of community “greenfrastructure” (e.g., parks, city gardens, trails and connective corridors, forests, and agricultural lands) and its vital role. Our ability to help find the intersects and bring together human and natural systems through our work has made an enduring impact on the long-term sustainability of communities across the nation… and we hold close this responsibility.

In practice, successful management, conservation and restoration of natural resources must coordinate and integrate complex, time-dependent ecosystem processes with human dynamics and decision-making. The Resource Dimensions’ team has been at the national and international forefront of fields such as ecological economics, planning, land conservation, and the human dimensions of resource management that have long advocated and advanced the integration of qualitative and qualitative analytical methods at the community and landscape level. Employing ecological principles, our work takes a whole systems approach to addressing natural resource management issues and related policy-making. We are developing solutions ranging for cutting-edge GIS-based analytical models, facilitating land conservation, recreation, and community planning decisions. We are also building comprehensive resource management plans, addressing biological resources, threatened and endangered species, and wildland fire. Resource-based recreation and management is an area of particular focus.

Resource Dimensions’ principals have worked on identifying and quantifying the economic impacts and benefits generated by non-market goods and services provided by nature since the mid-1980’s. Much of our work has focused on assessing the wide-ranging benefits using economic valuation techniques to address issues as the full-cycle valuation of protected lands, trails, resource-based recreation lands, forest lands, wetlands, in-stream waters and other resource lands. Our particular area of expertise is in assessing the economic contributions such natural resources make to local and regional economies—their ecosystem services value. Read the Resource Dimensions` primer on ecological economics and ecosystem service valuation to the annual special Environmental Outlook edition of the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. Our approach relies the use of integrated valuation models which use biological/ecological systems data, social data inputs (e.g. attitudes, values and policy), and economic data inputs to assist in establishing estimates related to willingness-to-pay and valuation rankings for various ecological goods and services provided by nature to assist in developing sound government policies and long-range comprehensive plans.

Resource Dimensions’ policy and risk analyses address risks to both human and ecosystem health. The breadth of our work spans planning, economics, and policy and risk assessment in three primary areas that include environmental impact assessment, environmental and human health risk assessment, and risk management programs. Our work draws on diverse disciplines including environmental and natural resource sciences, social sciences, toxicology, decision theory, psychology, applied statistics, and economics. Principal Carey Bare has more than two decades of experience in land use and facilities planning and the development of risk management programs, and in the preparation of environmental impact analyses and mitigation plans for such installations and their vast landscapes and diverse environments. He leads the work of our multidisciplinary Policy & Risk Analysis group in developing, environmental and economic risk decision analyses and innovative strategic plans grounded in the natural and social sciences. Working across communities and landscapes, we have assisted numerous tribal, local, state, and federal agencies and private sector partners in their navigation of a broad range of complex land use and controversial environmental issues. As part of this work, we have completed an array of supporting studies and the prepared numerous state and federal Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) and Environmental Assessments (EA).

Our Resource Dimensions’ president began her legal sector career in 1982. For nearly a decade her litigation support work spanned from personal injury, to products liability for a multi-national fluid systems handling firm in Minneapolis, to OSHA compliance, and hazardous materials cases. By the late 80`s, Dr. Gustanski had worked with the State of Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and later with the law firm of O`Connor & Hannan where her caseload covered a range of environmental, land use, personal injury, property damage, and institutional liability cases. With practical experience in law, economics, land use planning and resource management, Resource Dimensions offers our clients a unique mix of support capabilities including issue identification, data analysis, and preparation of legal support documentation. For over two-decades we have provided regulatory and litigation support on a variety of complex cases addressing a range of economic and socio-economic impacts of various land use, resource management policies, zoning, and environmental and natural resource damages.