An Ecosystem Framework for use in Recovery and Management of the Puget Sound Ecosystem: Linking Assessments of Ecosystem Condition to Threats and Management Strategies

The ongoing influx of people to the Puget Sound basin has placed pressure on the ecosystem and contributed to a decline in ecosystem health. The Puget Sound Partnership (Partnership), formed in July 2007, is leading an effort to restore the health of Puget Sound. The Partnership is taking an ecosystem-based approach to management that will, over time, address policy questions associated with multiple interacting ecosystem goals. As a foundation of this approach, indicators of ecosystem condition are used to describe a healthy Puget Sound, to evaluate progress towards meeting the recovery goals, to evaluate and adapt management strategies, and as the basis for reporting back to the public. A portfolio of high-level ecological and human health indicators, “vital signs,” was developed and adopted in 2011. Since then, the indicators have received external review by the WA State Academy of Sciences, scientists, planners, decision-makers, and other stakeholders. In response, the Partnership is evolving its portfolio of indicators in order to provide a broader set of indicators to track progress toward threat reductions and ecosystem recovery. To guide the indicator evolution process, we developed an overall organizing ecosystem framework that is an amalgamation of three frameworks: (1) a generalized “causal chain/network framework” that is used to link drivers and pressures of ecosystem health with (2) a framework for assessment of the condition of Puget Sound’s biophysical system, and (3) a framework for the condition of human well-being (HWB). Assessing a complete array of condition and driver/pressure indicators can aid the analysis of the causal mechanisms underlying compromised ecosystem condition. Moreover, in this framework, HWB is recognized as an outcome of biophysical condition as well as a driver of biophysical condition, and that its many components are differentially affected by and can affect conservation outcomes. This paper will present examples of how the Partnership, working with the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program, is using this ecosystem framework to identify key ecosystem attributes and associated indicators for major ecosystem components. These biophysical condition indicators, along with indicators of key pressures on the system and indicators of HWB, can be used adaptively to track the recovery of Puget Sound.