The Regional Sustainable Environmental Science (RESES) program focuses on forming regional research partnerships to enable effective, efficient and socially responsible solutions to commonly faced resource sustainability problems. RESES combines practical field measures with effective, long-term community involvement by using the best available tools and science to assign value to ecosystem goods and services.

Ecosystem goods and services are the many life-sustaining benefits we receive from nature: clean air and water, fertile soil for crop production, pollination, and flood control. Ecosystems regulate air and water quality, provide protection from storms and floods, produce food and essential material, and provide opportunities for recreation.

RESES is meant to be a flexible, evolving, broadly inclusive method to help quickly address challenging regional environmental issues. The program creates partnerships within EPA, other federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations and communities to demonstrate case study applications to inform decision making.

Currently, 15 RESES projects are underway across all 10 EPA regions to demonstrate the value of this type of fully collaborative community-based approach. Although these demonstration projects span a range of geographically and scientifically distinct remediation challenges, and some deal almost exclusively with how to share important environmental policy, the driving force in each case is how to gain a realistic evaluation of a shared environmental resource, whether that is a physical setting, a renewable commodity or an issue of social fairness.

Current RESES Projects:

• Supporting Communities using EPA Science Tools (R10)
• Research and development of National Waste to Biogas Mapping Tool – Creating an Organic Resources Exchange (R9)
• Real-Time Monitoring of Domestic Water Consumption in Concert with Real-Time Energy Measurement in Multifamily Housing (R8)
• Development of Sustainability Tool for Tribal Housing Decision Making (R8)
• Preparing Communities for Disruptive Climate Events in Southern Massachusetts (R1)
• Solution-Oriented Cumulative Risk and Near-Source Air Quality Assessments in Five Communities (R2, R3, R4, R5)
• Community Resilience Planning and Decision Making Framework for Coastal (R4)
• A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) in Springfield, Mass., Environmental Justice Community Elementary School to Evaluate Proposed Remediation Scenarios for Indoor Sources and Near-Roadway Transportation Exposures (R1)
• Conducting an HIA in the Proctor Creek District of Atlanta, Ga., to assess the distribution of both environmental and health impacts as Green Infrastructure approaches to Community Revitalization move forward (R4)
• Inland Port Community Resilience Transportation Analysis in Mississippi (R4)
• Using Green Infrastructure to Address Climate Change: A Case Study in N. Birmingham, Ala. (R4)
• Parking lot Strategies to Mitigate Storm Water Quality/Volume and Urban Heat Island Effect Using Trees in Green Infrastructure (R6)
• Citizen Monitoring of Water Quality and Sanitation in a Rural Puerto Rico Watershed (R2)
• Development and Implementation of Bioavailability Tools to Link with C-FERST, Community Involvement and Inform Community Decisions (R2, R9)
• Working with Communities to Develop Practical Measures of Sustainability (R1, R2, R4, R7)