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One of the first working models of Puget Sound was a scaled-down concrete reproduction, with actual water running through channels, around islands and into bays, inlets, and harbors. Motors, pumps and timing gears are part of an elaborate mechanism that replicates tides and river flows in the still-functioning model.

Puget Sound has been dramatically altered during the past 150 years. One-third of the shoreline has been armored, large areas of forestland and farmland have been paved or otherwise converted to other uses, and river systems have been altered by dams and levees. These actions were undertaken to produce other benefits, but they cumulatively damage and destroy the underlying ecological processes that enable Puget Sound to be healthy and productive. Human population growth and a changing climate in Puget Sound will exacerbate the threats to ecosystem health. To maintain or restore the structure and function of the Puget Sound ecosystem, it is imperative to identify and retain the important features of the ecosystem that still function well.

A 2015 paper in the journal Marine Policy examines surveys of Puget Sound anglers to provide baseline information related to rockfish conservation. 

Their genetic makeup, shaped through history, has given European green crabs remarkable advantages over native species.

Ecoregions by state were extracted from the seamless national shapefile. Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components.

Years after the appearance of the devastating marine heat wave known as "the blob," scientists are still working to understand how it has affected the Salish Sea. In some ways, they say, it is like the blob never left.

This article was originally published by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as part of its annual report Threatened and Endangered Wildlife in Washington.

An estuary is a place where saltwater from the ocean mixes with freshwater from rivers and streams. Technically, this defines all of Puget Sound, but scientists have identified several types of "sub-estuaries" within the water body. These include pocket estuaries (or embayments), tidally-influenced rivers and wetlands and other areas near the shoreline connected with freshwater sources. This summary provides descriptions of these estuaries from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the Puget Sound Nearshore Partnership and others.  

This article originally appeared in the State of Washington Bat Conservation Plan. Further information is available from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.