Welcome to this self-paced training for an Overview of Structured Decision Making (SDM). This course is designed to offer natural resource managers a rational framework and techniques to assist in making smart decisions. To apply SDM with confidence, it will be helpful to have a basic understanding of modeling concepts

The course instructors Dr. Mike Runge and Dr. Sarah Converse are both research ecologists with USGS and highly regarded experts for structured decision making.

Each module consists of video lectures and a section from the course workbook (pdf). Skill checks identified in the videos include a reference to a specific page found in the workbook. 

This course was developed in collaboration between these U.S. Department of the Interior agencies: Bureau of Land Management (National Training Center), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (National Conservation Training Center), and the U.S. Geological Survey (Patuxent Wildlife Research Center).

Course Description

Last Updated: July 14, 2020

Introduction
Module A: Why Structured Decision Making?
Part 1
Part 2
Module B: Problems
Part 1
Part 2
Module C: Objectives
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Module D: Alternatives
Part 1:
Module E: Consequences
Part 1:
Part 2:
Module F: Psychology
Part 1
Part 2
Module G: Trade Offs
Part 1
Module H: Multiple Objects
Module I: Risk
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3: Climate Change
Module J: Uncertainty: Monitoring and Adaptive Management
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