The Puget Sound ecosystem: an outline

Each year, state and federal agencies put more than a hundred million dollars toward the protection and restoration of Puget Sound. All of these efforts are informed in some fashion by science. It's a simple equation: what we know about the ecosystem ultimately determines how we take care of it.

That's one of the founding principles behind this website. Our goal is to improve access to the best available, most relevant scientific information related to Puget Sound recovery. We rely on a number of guides for this, from the Puget Sound Science Review and the Biennial Science Work Plan to the Puget Sound Action Agenda.

While there is a great deal of additional scientific information out there about the Puget Sound ecosystem, it is not always organized at the watershed scale and tends to be scattered across many sources. Last year, we wondered if it was possible to bring these different sources together. We posed this question to our editorial board and asked them to create a series of draft outlines to guide us. Each board member covered a particular topic related to their expertise, including:

• Biology: Joe Gaydos, Timothy Quinn and Charles Simenstad
• Chemistry: Joel Baker
• Physical Environment: Parker MacCready
• Social Science: Patrick Christie
• Ecosystem-based Management: Mary Ruckelshaus
• Climate Change: Amy Snover 

Their outlines are presented here. They are not finished products, nor are they meant to be comprehensive. They are the start of a process. We will continue to hone and develop them as we move forward, and a quick look reveals some of the thinking behind the Encyclopedia's structure. In the coming months, you will see new products on this website influenced by these outlines—new sections related to habitat mapping, species and food webs; an online guide to the physical environment of Puget Sound prepared by Parker MacCready; an update to the 2009 Washington Climate Change Impact Assessment by the UW Climate Impacts Group focusing on the Puget Sound watershed. These are just some of the syntheses in development by our board, as well as other leading scientists from around the region.

We also invite you, the reader, to help us. Do you have peer-reviewed or vetted content that you would like to share that falls into any of these outlines or categories? Take a look and let us know. Send us links, share your papers, involve your students, start a dialogue. Visit our community page to find out how you can get involved. 

View the EoPS editorial board outlines for 2013/2014