Abstract:

The social ecological system of the United States Virgin Islands is vulnerable to external stressors such as natural hazards and climate change. Achieving sustainability of this system involves coordination between the major ecosystems (forests, guts/ghuts, mangroves, beaches, salt ponds/salt flats, coral reefs, seagrass beds), local resource managers, and resource actors. However, the perceptions of the resource actors towards these ecosystems have not been sufficiently documented, and generally are thought to be limited. This study sought to identify the perceptions of ecosystems in the USVI through surveys of residents of St. Thomas, and then to compare those perceptions to governing documents of the territory. A sample of 384 respondents were surveyed from March 25th, 2024 - May 30th, 2024 to collect perceptions of the seven ecosystems ranging from perceptions of ecosystem services, perceptions of ecosystem health and perceptions of ecosystem importance. The dataset contains anonymized survey data, codes created for sub-themes and themes present in the open ended responses while analyzing the survey data using the qualitative analysis software MAXQDA, and a codebook for the definition of each of the codes.