Tuesday, September 15, Noon US EDT/9 am US PDT/4 pm UTC Live Chat on The Marine Planning Concierge with Mary Ruckelshaus and Gregg Verutes of the Natural Capital Project.

To help address common questions and planning dilemmas, the Natural Capital Project's Marine Team has designed a "concierge" to make it easier to learn about, get inspired by and implement marine planning. The Marine Planning Concierge is a website that connects users to resources for using ecosystem services in marine planning. They are curious about whether or not this kind of guidance might be useful in other aspects of the Natural Capital Project’s work to lower barriers to using ecosystem service understanding in diverse types of decisions.

The Concierge, similar to the help desk located in a hotel lobby, aims to provide clear, modular advice for any stage of the planning process, and to offer a curated library of useful resources. The Concierge also describes and links to examples of how the Natural Capital Project and others engaging in marine planning processes around the world have gotten over common hurdles, such as how to move forward when data is scarce, how to synthesize and visualize data from different sources and units, or where to go for help when the tools you're using are beyond your technical expertise. The Concierge also connects users to helper tools that make it easier to use the InVEST toolkit.

In this interactive "Office Hour" chat, Mary Ruckelshaus (Managing Director) and Gregg Verutes (Science Education Lead) of the Natural Capital Project will introduce the Concierge and take your questions and suggestions for improving the tool. Chat co-sponsored by OpenChannels.org and the EBM Tools Network. Join the chat at https://www.openchannels.org/chat/live-chat-marine-planning-concierge-mary-ruckelshaus-and-gregg-verutes-natural-capital-project.