An integrated environmental and human systems modeling framework for Puget Sound restoration planning.
Citation:
McKane, R., Bradley Barnhart, P. Pettus, J. Halama, A. Brookes, K. Djang, T. Khangoankar, C. Harvey, I. Kaplan, H. Morzaria-Luna, M. Schmidt, E. Howe, AND P. Levin. An integrated environmental and human systems modeling framework for Puget Sound restoration planning. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Salem, OR, April 26, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Puget Sound is the USA’s second largest estuary by area and the largest by volume. Its diverse terrestrial and marine habitats form a complex ecosystem that provides highly valued natural resources vital to the well-being of nearly 5 million people. However, accelerating population growth, land use change, climate change and other stressors have extensively altered the functioning of this ecosystem and its capacity to provide clean water and air and other essential goods and services for urban and rural communities. Additionally, a growing number of marine and terrestrial species are threatened, endangered or already extinct, much of which is attributable to extensive anthropogenic ecosystem alteration. Current Puget Sound restoration efforts are fragmented across local, state, federal and tribal jurisdictions.
Description:
Local, state, federal, tribal and private stakeholders have committed significant resources to restoring Puget Sound’s terrestrial-marine ecosystem. Though jurisdictional issues have promoted a fragmented approach to restoration planning, there is growing recognition that a more coordinated systems-based restoration approach is needed to achieve recovery goals. This presentation describes our collaborative effort to develop and apply an integrated environmental and human systems modeling framework for the Puget Sound Basin, inclusive of all marine and land areas (1,020 and 12,680 sq. mi.). Our goal is to establish a whole-basin systems modeling framework that dynamically simulates biophysical interactions and transfers (water, nutrients, contaminants, biota) across terrestrial-marine boundaries. The core environmental models include a terrestrial ecohydrological model (VELMA), an ocean circulation and biogeochemistry model (Salish Sea Model), and an ocean food web model (Atlantis). This environmental subsystem will be linked with an agent-based modeling subsystem (e.g., Envision) that allows human decision-makers to be represented in whole-basin simulations. The integrated environmental and human systems framework aims to facilitate discourse among different stakeholders and decision makers (agents) and enable them play out the ecological, social and economic consequences of alternative ecosystem restoration choices. All of these models are currently being applied in Puget Sound, but they have not yet been integrated. The linked models will better capture the propagation of human impacts throughout the terrestrial-marine ecosystem, and thereby provide a more effective decision support tool for addressing restoration of high priority environmental endpoints, such as the Vital Signs identified by the Puget Sound Partnership (http://www.psp.wa.gov/vitalsigns/). Our overview will include examples of existing stand-alone model applications, and conceptual plans for linking models across terrestrial-marine boundaries. The Puget Sound multi-model framework described here can potentially be expanded to address the entire Salish Sea transboundary ecosystem (https://www.eopugetsound.org/maps/salish-sea-basin-and-water-boundaries).