Environmental Decision Vignettes

South Dakota Decision Lab

Environmental decisions rarely depend on one dataset. These examples show how CubeDynamics combines environmental nouns through short, readable analytical pipes—and how to stop when the evidence is not ready.

The repeated method

Check the nouns. Read the sentence. Interpret only what it measured.

Every publishable result keeps source QA beside the final decision view. A planned noun is never presented as a working loader.

QUESTION↓NOUNS↓PIPE↓QA↓DECISION VIEW↓INTERPRETATION

Choose a decision question

“Executable” means the page uses current public loaders and verbs, checked observations, visible QA, and an offline notebook. “Dependency design” means the decision is scientifically worthwhile but one or more public nouns or general spatial operations do not yet exist. Those pages are honest design specifications—not mock analyses.

A

Dependency design

Black Hills · Growth, fire & extraction

Where are development, wildfire history, and extractive activity close enough to warrant joint review?

Buildings · fire history · mining claims · protected areas Inspect the dependency design → B

Dependency design

Missouri & watersheds · Water in a changing landscape

Where has mapped surface water changed, and which human or agricultural systems are nearby?

Surface water · hydrography · cropland · roads Inspect the dependency design → C

Executable now · observed data

Working Lands · Read hot-and-dry weather as two nouns

Where did unusually warm July days and trace-or-no-rain days coincide in a bounded central South Dakota window?

Temperature · precipitation Run the decision notebook → D

Dependency design

Habitat Squeeze · Conservation under multiple pressures

Where do mapped human activities overlap places already identified as conservation priorities?

Critical habitat · protected areas · roads · claims Inspect the dependency design → E

Dependency design

Communities · Who and what is exposed?

Which built areas occur in landscapes with a history of wildfire or another clearly measured condition?

Buildings · population · fire history · climate Inspect the dependency design → ✦

Hackathon template

What should South Dakota know?

Start with a real decision, choose at least three vetted nouns, and show what the usual map leaves out.

Your question · public nouns · reusable verbs · visible QA Fork the template →

What is ready today?

The collection validation report is the source of truth. It lists the exact implemented vocabulary, the working notebook's observed-data provenance and acceptance checks, and every noun or reusable verb blocking the four dependency designs. That ledger is intentional: these vignettes are also a stress test of the CubeDynamics grammar.

Run the executable decision vignette

python -m pip install -e ".[vignettes]"
python scripts/run_vignettes.py docs/decision_vignettes/working_lands.ipynb

The notebook is network-free because it uses a small, checksum-controlled PRISM extract acquired by the public noun loaders. To refresh the observation fixture from the provider, run python scripts/build_sd_working_lands_fixture.py with network access, then rerun the validation suite.