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Puget Sound Applications of the VELMA Ecohydrological Model
Citation:
Mckane, Bob, B. Barnhart, P. Pettus, J. Halama, A. Brookes, AND K. Djang. Puget Sound Applications of the VELMA Ecohydrological Model. Seminar at the University of Washington Tacoma, Puget Sound Institute and Center for Urban Waters, Tacoma, WA, June 11, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Numerous studies have established that impacts from mounting population and climatic pressures are decreasing the capacity of Puget Sound’s watersheds and estuaries to provide services essential to human health and well-being – clean drinking water, flood protection, habitat for fish and wildlife, and many other economic, social and health benefits. This seminar describes how EPA’s VELMA watershed simulator is being used to support communities, tribes, State of Washington and federal agencies (EPA Region 10, NOAA, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) engaged in ecosystem restoration planning in rural and urban watersheds within the 13,000 square-mile Puget Sound Basin. The seminar will explain how this work aims to bring together ecosystem modelers and restoration planners representing local communities, tribes and the State of Washington. The goal of this partnership is to more tightly integrate ecosystem service concepts and modeling into estuarine and coastal watershed planning and management. Currently, local planners and managers face the difficult challenge of extrapolating impacts of their restoration actions over time and space and across jurisdictional boundaries. Similarly, ecosystem scientists find it difficult to accurately model large coastal watersheds such as Puget Sound (>31,000 km^2) without the detailed on-the-ground knowledge that local planners and managers possess. Therefore, our partnership seeks to integrate the expertise of both groups.
Description:
This seminar will present an overview of EPA’s Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA) model and its applications in the Puget Sound Basin. Topics will include a description of how VELMA simulates the interaction of hydrological and biogeochemical processes in rural and urban watersheds, and its current applications for assisting communities, tribes and regional restoration planners. The model is helping these stakeholders to better understand and anticipate the effects of land use and climate on the capacity of Puget Sound ecosystems to provide clean drinking water, flood control, habitat for fish and wildlife, food and fiber and other services. New work focusing on a multi-organization effort to develop an integrated terrestrial-marine modeling framework (VELMA/Salish Sea Model/Atlantis) for whole-basin Puget Sound restoration planning will also be discussed.