Puget Sound Pressures Assessment -- What stressors most affect Puget Sound recovery and long-term protection? How is this information being used?
Presentation Abstract
The 2014 Puget Sound Pressures Assessment (PSPA) was an effort commissioned by the Puget Sound Partnership’s Science Panel to better understand the stressors on the Sound’s freshwater, marine-nearshore, and terrestrial resources and identify the critical vulnerabilities that should be addressed to ensure sustainable long-term protection and recovery. The assessment rated the vulnerability of 60 ‘endpoints’ – which are discrete species, habitat types, landforms, or ecological processes – to 47 ‘stressors’ – which are the human and natural processes that are the proximate agents for change to the Puget Sound ecosystem. Key findings include: stressors with the most potential for harm and endpoints that are most vulnerable to harm (intrinsic vulnerability), relative uncertainty about stressor-endpoint relationships, current stressor intensity for geographic assessment unit and Sound-wide, and potential impact of stressors at the assessment unit and Sound-wide scales. Two land cover conversion stressors and two non-point pollution stressors are highly rated in both intrinsic vulnerability and potential impact. Throughout 2015 Partnership staff used PSPA findings to update its evaluation of ecosystem recovery processes and communicated PSPA findings to guide a number of entities’ decisions about priority stressors and sources of stress. The Partnership has also begun to use the PSPA findings as the foundation of a climate vulnerability assessment. These uses of the PSPA findings provide insights into some of the benefits provided by the assessment, limitations and challenges in supporting decisions about priority stressors and sources of stress, and the most-pressing improvements to the 2014 effort and products.
Session Title
Decision support tools to support adaptive management of Salish Sea restoration efforts
Conference Track
Protection, Remediation and Restoration
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2016 : Vancouver, B.C.)
Document Type
Event
Start Date
2016 12:00 AM
End Date
2016 12:00 AM
Location
2016SSEC
Type of Presentation
Oral
Genre/Form
conference proceedings; presentations (communicative events)
Contributing Repository
Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Water quality--Washington (State)--Puget Sound; Water quality management--Washington (State)--Puget Sound; Environmental monitoring--Washington (State)--Puget Sound
Geographic Coverage
Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Puget Sound (Wash.)
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Puget Sound Pressures Assessment -- What stressors most affect Puget Sound recovery and long-term protection? How is this information being used?
2016SSEC
The 2014 Puget Sound Pressures Assessment (PSPA) was an effort commissioned by the Puget Sound Partnership’s Science Panel to better understand the stressors on the Sound’s freshwater, marine-nearshore, and terrestrial resources and identify the critical vulnerabilities that should be addressed to ensure sustainable long-term protection and recovery. The assessment rated the vulnerability of 60 ‘endpoints’ – which are discrete species, habitat types, landforms, or ecological processes – to 47 ‘stressors’ – which are the human and natural processes that are the proximate agents for change to the Puget Sound ecosystem. Key findings include: stressors with the most potential for harm and endpoints that are most vulnerable to harm (intrinsic vulnerability), relative uncertainty about stressor-endpoint relationships, current stressor intensity for geographic assessment unit and Sound-wide, and potential impact of stressors at the assessment unit and Sound-wide scales. Two land cover conversion stressors and two non-point pollution stressors are highly rated in both intrinsic vulnerability and potential impact. Throughout 2015 Partnership staff used PSPA findings to update its evaluation of ecosystem recovery processes and communicated PSPA findings to guide a number of entities’ decisions about priority stressors and sources of stress. The Partnership has also begun to use the PSPA findings as the foundation of a climate vulnerability assessment. These uses of the PSPA findings provide insights into some of the benefits provided by the assessment, limitations and challenges in supporting decisions about priority stressors and sources of stress, and the most-pressing improvements to the 2014 effort and products.
Comments
Project website: https://sites.google.com/site/pressureassessment/home