Category: Findings

September 27, 2021

Conference highlights latest findings on toxic chemical in tires

The International Conference on Emerging Contaminants (EMCON), hosted virtually this month by the University of Washington, focused on newly identified threats from chemicals and microplastics in the environment. The conference provided an opportunity to hear the latest research on the discovery of a tire-related compound deadly to Puget Sound’s coho salmon.
The cause of what scientists have labeled “urban runoff mortality syndrome” among coho had been a mystery for more than 20 years until it was solved last December by scientists at our affiliate organization the Center for Urban Waters. Their research, in collaboration with scientists at the Washington Stormwater Center and NOAA, identified the deadly chemical as 6PPD-quinone, a transformation product from a tire preservative known as 6PPD.
Since that time, the discovery has touched off a wave of new research. Scientists are looking at where the chemical is found, how it moves through the environment, and whether it is impacting species other than coho, including humans.
Speaking at the conference, Zhenyu Tian of Northeastern University reported that 6PPD-quinone is widespread. The compound has now been found across the West Coast in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and as far away as China. Scientists assume that it occurs throughout the world. It has turned up as expected in roadside streams, but also in airborne dust particles in homes and appears to move easily through the environment.

Slide from Zhenyu Tian’s presentation showing deadly concentrations of 6PPD-quinone

Here in Puget Sound, researchers at the Center for Urban Waters, including Tian, have been studying 6PPD-quinone in Miller Creek in Seattle. Samples taken from storms in autumn 2020 and spring 2021 showed that the more it rained, the more the chemical washed from roads into the creek, often in deadly amounts. Researchers found 6PPD-quinone at concentrations well over the amount needed to kill coho. “Even if you put this [amount of chemicals] in a raging creek, you still can have a toxicological effect on the coho salmon,” Tian said.
This high toxicity amplifies concerns about how the chemical may be affecting species other than coho. Since its discovery, however, scientists have been surprised to find that while 6PPD-quinone is deadly to coho, chum salmon appear to be unharmed by it. So far, that seems to be the case for other species as well.
A recent study from Japan shows that 6PPD-quinone is not lethally toxic to some freshwater species like the small crustaceans Daphnia magna or zebra fish. Researchers eventually hope to test the effect of the chemical on other species such as rainbow trout and Chinook salmon, which have shown general sensitivity to stormwater but not 6PPD-quinone specifically. Scientists are also investigating whether the compound may be harmful to humans who are exposed to recycled rubber from tires on playgrounds, sports fields, and other environments.
The subject of potential effects on other species has caught the interest of Congress. Last month, Representatives Marilyn Strickland, D-Tacoma, and Derek Kilmer D-Gig Harbor wrote a letter to House and Senate leadership requesting $1.5 million dollars to support additional research into the effects of 6PPD-quinone. [For more information about the letter and how the discovery of 6PPD-quinone has rippled across the policy and scientific landscape, read Christopher Dunagan’s blog, “Discovery of tire-related chemical that kills coho salmon sparks widespread response.“]
In the short term, Tian said, scientists are looking at ways to keep 6PPD-quinone out of local creeks. Bioswales have been shown to filter out up to 80% of the chemical, but “we simply cannot put bioswales everywhere,” he said. “For the long term, we still think 6PPD as an antioxidant should be replaced for a safer chemical.” Until that happens, coho populations are expected to remain threatened, and “it’s very less likely that coho salmon are the only species impacted by this toxicant,” Tian said.

March 4, 2021

Are summer low flows increasing in Puget Sound streams?

Update: A pdf of slides from the presentation is now available.
Adequate stream flows are critical to Puget Sound’s endangered salmon and are one of the state’s ‘Vital Sign’ indicators of ecosystem health. Earlier data suggests that summer stream flows have been on the decline, but new analysis shows that gauging these flows may be more complicated than previously thought. On Monday, March 15th, Puget Sound Institute senior research scientist Nick Georgiadis will discuss statistical models that show an apparent increase in summer stream flows over the past 20 years due to climate oscillations. His talk will be presented at 10:00 AM via Zoom at the link below.
Join the Zoom meeting: https://washington.zoom.us/j/96431547752
Date: March 15, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM (Please login at 9.55 AM)
Meeting ID: 964 3154 7752
Program abstract:
For streams flowing into Puget Sound, the lowest flows of the year (‘summer low flows’) must be sufficient to sustain instream biota, including salmon, for the foreseeable future. Evidence that low flows have declined raised concerns that factors relating to human development, including anthropogenic warming (globally) and groundwater abstraction (locally), may have impacted low flows, and will further impact low flows in the future. Uncertainty about causality requires that a precautionary approach be adopted in restoration and preservation strategies currently under development. To better inform these strategies, much remains to be learned about factors affecting low flows. I will present statistical modeling results suggesting that opposing, multi-decadal oscillations in rainfall and temperature drive a pronounced oscillation in low flows. The declining phase of this oscillation in low flows spans ~1960-2000. Since then, trends in low flows appear to have switched from negative to positive. These patterns characterize how climate change and variation have affected low flows in the past, and help to shape our expectations for the future.

December 3, 2020

Could tire discovery go beyond impacts on coho?

Scientists have suspected for several years that chemicals from tire wear particles are to blame for the deaths of thousands of coho salmon that have returned to spawn in Puget Sound’s urban streams. Sometimes referred to as “pre-spawn mortality” or “urban runoff mortality syndrome,” these deaths typically occur in streams near roads, and scientists have been analyzing a wide variety of automobile-derived chemicals to see if they produced similar toxic effects.
Now, thanks to some painstaking detective work by our partners at the University of Washington Center for Urban Waters (our groups are affiliated and share lab space) and many other collaborators, researchers can point to 6-PPD-quinone, a derivative from a preservative in tires called 6-PPD. The finding is as unexpected as it is fraught with implications. The chemical comes about only when the tire preservative is exposed to naturally occurring ground-level ozone in the environment creating a “transformation product” not previously identified. A paper outlining the discovery is published today (Dec. 3) in the journal Science and you can read more details from Christopher Dunagan in our magazine Salish Sea Currents.

A dying female coho salmon in the Lower Duwamish spotted by Puget Soundkeeper volunteers in October 2017. Photo: Kathy Peter

In some ways the research on 6-PPD-quinone is just beginning. What started out as a local mystery could now catalyze studies around the world. Scientists wonder if the newly identified chemical is harming more than just coho.
“This is the first thing I’ve worked on in my career where I have no idea where the story ends,” says the paper’s co-senior author Ed Kolodziej. “It’s kind of what keeps you up at night. You’re wondering, ‘How wide is it?'”
Tires and similar rubber products are found everywhere in the world, he points out, and while 6-PPD-quinone has not been shown to kill some other species of salmon (it doesn’t appear to harm chum, for example) there is speculation that the impacts could be more widespread.
“We just have no idea,” he says. “All these questions are just totally wide open because there’s just no information out there.”
Given the potential ramifications, scientists may now begin to search for similar impacts among often vulnerable species such as stream invertebrates and amphibians, but it is also clear that humans are sometimes exposed to similar 6-PPD compounds. “We know the 6-PPD parent compound [has been documented] in house dust,” Kolodziej offers as an example. It also occurs in recycled tires that are used for crumb rubber playing fields and gym mats. “We’re generating a billion tires a year globally that need to be disposed of,” says Kolodziej. “All these things and all those recycled products likely contain some level of 6-PPD and the 6-PPD quinone as well. So, humans, I think, have a variety of exposure pathways.”
Could that endanger human health? “Again, we just have no idea,” Kolodziej says.
What is known, however, are the implications for coho salmon. In the short term, Kolodziej hopes that the revelations in the Science paper will at least lead to more “salmon safe” tires.
“Tires need these preservative chemicals to make them last,” Kolodziej told UW News. “It’s just a question of which chemicals are a good fit for that and then carefully evaluating their safety for humans, aquatic organisms,” and other species, he says. “We’re not sure what alternative chemical we would recommend, but we do know that chemists are really smart and have many tools in their toolboxes to figure out a safer chemical alternative.”

View a video about the discovery below.

April 14, 2020

The coronavirus has been found in Tacoma sewage. It could help scientists track the pandemic

Researchers at a non-profit biotech startup in Tacoma have found traces of the novel coronavirus in the city’s sewage, opening up new possibilities for tracking and monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. The testing is being led by Center for Urban Waters collaborator David Hirschberg who directs the RAIN biotech incubator in Tacoma, along with RAIN’s principal scientist Stanley Langevin and recent University of Washington Tacoma graduate Ryan Culbert who ran the tests.
“We found it,” said Hirschberg, who began collecting samples of raw sewage and sludge from the city’s Central Wastewater Treatment Plant in recent weeks. “The [coronavirus] is in there. There is no way it can’t be.” Hirschberg said the levels of the virus were very low and “we don’t think it is infectious,” but the presence of the virus may help scientists in the battle to identify infection hot spots around the world. The evidence was found in raw sewage influent referred to as “water sludge” by wastewater treatment officials.
Stuart Magoon, the assistant division manager of Environmental Services for the City of Tacoma said he had been informed by Hirschberg that the virus had been found in Tacoma sludge, but that its presence did not pose any additional threat to workers who were already taking standard precautions. “There are plenty of things in sewage that you don’t want to get exposed to,” he said, “so the technicians are already very careful.” In addition, experts believe the coronavirus was found at such tiny amounts that it was not in an active or virulent form.
Hirschberg, who specializes in environmental monitoring for diseases is an independent researcher who has worked for many organizations, including the U.S. Department of Defense, to develop monitoring systems for dangerous pathogens such as anthrax. His group received permission from the City of Tacoma to test sewage in the hope of developing a “tripwire” for tracking the outbreak.
“We really believe this could be an early warning system,” Hirschberg says. Currently, most testing, where it is available, focuses on individuals, but Hirschberg says the ability to find coronavirus in the environment would allow health officials to focus their testing or identify when new outbreaks occurred. That could be especially helpful for catching many cases where people may have no symptoms, or in the early stages of the infection before patients are identified. There are currently more than 330 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Tacoma and more than 10,200 in the state of Washington.
Hirschberg could imagine setting up inexpensive tests in different communities where health officials could mobilize to protect local schools or start more aggressive testing in certain areas. Other scientists around the world are looking for similar ways to test for the coronavirus in the environment. An article in the April 3^rd issue of Nature described how wastewater could be used as an “early warning sign if the virus returns.” Countries such as the Netherlands are already planning to step up wastewater monitoring for the novel coronavirus, the article says.
In addition to sewage, Hirschberg’s group at RAIN is hoping to detect the coronavirus on surfaces and in the air. His group has developed similar tests for dangerous pathogens, such as anthrax and other, earlier forms of SARS. “We have the tests and we have the technology,” Hirschberg says. However, government regulations for clinical laboratories have limited the ability of small labs such as RAIN to conduct testing. The expenses of following the government’s CLIA (Clinical Laboratory improvement Amendments) guidelines, for example, have been prohibitive. “It is absolutely slowing our response,” he says. Since the coronavirus pandemic hit, Hirschberg has been working with CLIA-certified labs to share ideas and improve the efficiency of testing and monitoring. “People are dying every day,” he says. “This kind of testing takes time and money, but we can’t afford to wait. We just need to start saving lives.”
Other long-term surveillance by Hirschberg’s group could include analyzing bat guano in the region to see if the virus or a version of it has migrated back into its original host organism. Epidemiologists believe coronavirus originated in bats in China.
Hirschberg says his approach to finding pathogens in the environment is similar to how scientists at the Center for Urban Waters and other groups use cutting edge analytical instrumentation and innovative data mining tools to look for markers of human activity, such as toxic chemicals in Puget Sound. Few scientists monitor for pathogens, he says, but that may be changing as the coronavirus raises public awareness of the impacts of disease. Hirschberg sees environmental testing as a critical tool for monitoring all sorts of outbreaks, including those in wildlife. “We should be very careful when things are dying around us,” Hirschberg says, whether it is salmon or orcas in Puget Sound, or humans facing a pandemic.

April 2, 2020

Time to spare? Why not conduct some real online research to advance science

If you are looking for something constructive to do in this stay-at-home period of our lives, I might suggest joining a team of scientists conducting real online research.
Zooniverse, a clearinghouse of about 100 active crowd-sourced science projects, has added educational materials for all age groups. Students learning at home can assist professional researchers as they seek answers to real scientific questions.
For a few other stay-at-home ideas, skip to the bottom of this page.
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One interesting Zooniverse project is “Penguin Watch,” in which citizen scientists are asked to look at photographs taken automatically at remote research sites where penguins congregate. The goal is to mark on the image where you see adult penguins, baby penguins and penguin eggs. The sheer number of images makes it difficult for a handful of researchers alone to do the work.
Radio reporter Andy Kubis of The Allegheny Front recently watched 4-year-old Nina Schulz working on the penguin project with her mother, Cristy Gelling of Pittsburgh. Nina carefully marked a spot on the screen.
“How do you know it’s a baby?” Cristy asked.
“Because it’s not black and white; it’s gray. And fluffy,” Nina replied. “I thought it was just a rock, but it wasn’t!” (Check out the audio below or on the AF website.)
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Allegheny Front: “Become a citizen scientist”

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By collecting many such observations over many photos, researchers can estimate the timing of penguin breeding, nesting and hatching under various conditions.
In the medical field — of particular interest at this time — participants are asked to “Bash the bug,” which involves identifying whether tuberculosis bacteria are growing in the presence of antibiotics at different concentrations. The goal is to identify strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and point the way to new antibiotic treatments.

Laura Trouille, co-lead for Zooniverse

The number of people participating in Zooniverse has recently increased dramatically as more people are staying home, said Laura Trouille, director of citizen science at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium and co-lead for Zooniverse. Last week, 17,000 new accounts were created — five times the number seen in a typical week. That brought the total number of registrations to 2 million, a major milestone for Zooniverse.
“To me, it has been extremely heartwarming to see the role that citizen science can play in this unusual and scary time,” Laura told me, adding that she has two young children who have been able to be involved from home.
Zooniverse, a collaboration of the Adler Planetarium, University of Oxford and the University of Minnesota, lists 11 general categories, from biology to literature to space. Each project includes a forum where researchers can discuss the findings and answer questions from participants. Researchers say the discussions have helped broaden their own perspectives as they share their knowledge.
Occasionally, citizen scientists involved in Zooniverse may make a remarkable discovery, such as when Hanny van Arkel, a 25-year-old Dutch school teacher, spotted something unusual while looking for galaxies on a project called Galaxy Zoo. She posted a question in the online forum after she spotted a cosmic “smudge” in the corner of her screen.
Eventually, the object was identified as a rare quasar ionization echo, described as a “ghost image” associated with a black hole. Someone named it Hanny’s Voorwerp (Dutch for Hanny’s object), and the name stuck as the object attracted the attention of astronomers from around the world. (Check out Hanny’s story on her website.)
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While Zooniverse projects often seem more like games than real science, Laura pointed out that pooling the work of multitudes of people can produce significant results. For each project, a team of experts validate the results by taking a sample of images and comparing the amateur and expert classifications. For most projects, there is a very high degree of agreement. Any differences often reflect a disagreement among the experts themselves.
So far, the citizen science projects have produced about 200 scientific papers, Laura told me. The papers are widely recognized for their findings and often quoted in other scientific journal articles, Laura said.
With 100 active projects to choose from, it should be easy to find a project that suits your interests. A good place to start is a new page called “Remote and online learning resources,” which lists projects of interest to different age groups.
Another new page describes how Zooniverse can be used to fulfill service or volunteer hours needed for high school graduation or for college scholarships. The page includes an eight-point program for getting the most out of the experience.

Other projects for those staying home

20 suggestions. I was impressed with the 20 smart suggestions offered by the Kitsap Sun’s Betsy Kornelis in an article about “teaching from home.” At the end of her piece, Betsy provides a sizable list of online resources worth checking out.
More advice. Katharine Hill, a learning specialist in Brooklyn, offers some good advice and interesting websites in an article in the New York Times.
SeaDoc Society, a research and education organization based in the San Juan Islands, has compiled a list of videos and activities organized by scientific field of interest. See “Homeschool: Your one-stop shop…”
Survive the Sound, a game based on the real-life movements of salmon, begins May 4, but participants can sign up now and choose a fish character to follow during the game. Start with the game and check out “Getting started in the classroom.” The project is sponsored by the organization Long Live the Kings.
Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, sponsored by Puget Sound Institute. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own publication, which I have promoted as an educational tool for both teachers and students. EoPS, as we call it, contains information about some of the latest research on dozens of topics involving Puget Sound and the entire Salish Sea. A good place to start is to choose an interesting “keyword” on the EoPS main page or scroll down to “recent articles” below that.

If anyone would like to make other suggestions, please mention them in the comments section below.

April 2, 2020

Time to spare? Why not conduct some real online research to advance science

Allegheny Front: “Become a citizen scientist”

Laura Trouille, co-lead for Zooniverse

Other projects for those staying home

20 suggestions. I was impressed with the 20 smart suggestions offered by the Kitsap Sun’s Betsy Kornelis in an article about “teaching from home.” At the end of her piece, Betsy provides a sizable list of online resources worth checking out.
More advice. Katharine Hill, a learning specialist in Brooklyn, offers some good advice and interesting websites in an article in the New York Times.
SeaDoc Society, a research and education organization based in the San Juan Islands, has compiled a list of videos and activities organized by scientific field of interest. See “Homeschool: Your one-stop shop…”
Survive the Sound, a game based on the real-life movements of salmon, begins May 4, but participants can sign up now and choose a fish character to follow during the game. Start with the game and check out “Getting started in the classroom.” The project is sponsored by the organization Long Live the Kings.
Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, sponsored by Puget Sound Institute. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own publication, which I have promoted as an educational tool for both teachers and students. EoPS, as we call it, contains information about some of the latest research on dozens of topics involving Puget Sound and the entire Salish Sea. A good place to start is to choose an interesting “keyword” on the EoPS main page or scroll down to “recent articles” below that.

If anyone would like to make other suggestions, please mention them in the comments section below.

March 5, 2020

Warming ocean conditions fuel viruses among species in the Salish Sea

As officials struggle to track and contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, ecologists say widespread impacts from viruses and other pathogens are also a growing threat to the species of the Salish Sea ecosystem.

“We’re all especially impressed with how rapidly [COVID-19] emerged, the pace of its spread and how massively it has changed our world already,” said Dr. Drew Harvell of Cornell University at last month’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle. “Infectious outbreaks of ocean organisms are also fast and impressive in scale but they are a lot harder to detect and track and see underneath the ocean.”

Harvell, who does much of her research at Friday Harbor Labs in Washington has studied the outbreaks of disease on ecologically important species such as starfish, corals and plants like seagrass. She is the author of the book “Ocean Outbreak” which looks at research on disease impacts in marine waters around the world, including the Salish Sea. She joined other scientists in a special session at the conference focusing on the impacts and responses to several diseases being studied in the region.
Harvell says that infectious disease outbreaks in the ocean are especially fueled by warmer water due to climate change. “Infectious agents are more virulent and grow faster at warmer temperatures,” she said.
Scientists are looking in particular at how these conditions might affect the region’s salmon populations. Dr. Kristina Miller of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada who also spoke at the conference has been studying the emergence of a relative of COVID-19 that has been found in species such as Chinook and coho. Known as the pacific salmon nidovirus, it only occurs in salmon and there are no cases of its transference to humans.
“There are no examples of a virus being able to jump from a cold blooded vertebrate such as a salmon to a warm blooded human,” Miller said. “So we don’t have a zoonotic risk in terms of that kind of transmission. Our temperature profiles are way too different, and viruses actually are, most of them, somewhat specific to their hosts.”
Despite these differences, Miller hypothesizes that the nidovirus may also cause respiratory stress similar to COVID-19 in its salmon hosts and may be one factor in salmon declines, especially if it affects fish at the vulnerable smolt stage when they transition from freshwater to marine environments.
“What we find is that as salmon move from freshwater to the marine environment, the condition of the fish that are leaving these habitats makes a large difference in how well they are going to survive,” Miller said. “So if you already have a fish coming out of the river that is already stressed — maybe it’s by disease or other factors — if you can mitigate those stressors and put out the healthiest possible fish to go into that marine environment… they will survive better.”

The nidovirus is just one of over 60 potential pathogens in salmon Miller and her colleagues identified in a study of thousands of wild, hatchery and farmed salmon. The true impact of such pathogens on salmon declines are not yet known, Miller said, owing to the difficulty of counting deceased fish. “The mere presence of a pathogen does not mean that a fish is diseased,” she said. “Disease is hard to study in wildlife when mortality is unobservable. Salmon in the ocean simply drop off in the water column, largely in the mouths of predators.”

But while counting deceased fish may be difficult, Miller and her colleagues are developing ecological models to estimate the level of mortality. “We are now employing this technology to explore the complex synergies between stress and disease and to identify regions along the coast where salmon are the most compromised,” she said. The model will combine data from studies of infectious diseases in salmon with factors such as ocean temperatures, which Miller called “the most significant driver of infection.”

May 30, 2019

Young herring ‘go with the older fish’ a key finding in Ocean Modeling Forum’s efforts

Puget Sound Institute lead ecosystem ecologist Tessa Francis was quoted in a recent article in UW News.
From UWT News Service:
“Young herring ‘go with the older fish’ a key finding in Ocean Modeling Forum’s efforts,” by Michelle Ma, UW News, May 29, 2019, http://www.washington.edu/news/2019/05/29/young-herring-go-with-the-older-fish-a-key-finding-in-ocean-modeling-forums-efforts/.

Tessa Francis is both the lead ecosystem ecologist at the Puget Sound Institute, housed at UW Tacoma’s Center for Urban Waters, and the managing director of the Ocean Modeling Forum (OMF), a science-collaboration group led by UW.

She is quoted in this story about new findings from the Ocean Modeling Forum’s ongoing study of Pacific herring, a species that is identified by the Puget Sound Partnership as a ‘vital sign’ for the health of the Salish Sea ecosystem.

In addition to the science findings—that herring instinctually find their way to spawning grounds by a process where younger fish follow older fish on their journeys to specific beaches—the story emphasizes how the OMF has broken new ground by convening scientists, commercial fishers, and First Nations and Indigenous stakeholders. The project specifically brings together “different approaches and knowledge—including traditional ecological knowledge” to rethink fisheries management practices.

May 30, 2019

Young herring ‘go with the older fish’ a key finding in Ocean Modeling Forum’s efforts

May 20, 2019

Survey illustrates a lack of familiarity with the Salish Sea

Washington and British Columbia residents are largely unfamiliar with the Salish Sea. A recent study conducted by the SeaDoc Society and Oregon State University reveals a need to improve geographic literacy and familiarity with the Salish Sea among those communities who share and live alongside this integrated transboundary ecosystem. This is a guest blog from two of the collaborators on the survey, David Trimbach of Oregon State University and Joe Gaydos, Science Director at the SeaDoc Society.
By David Trimbach and Joe Gaydos
Do place names matter? For about a decade the Salish Sea has been recognized as the official toponym (place name) of the transboundary sea and integrated ecosystem that includes the Strait of Georgia, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound. While the name may be formalized and known to regional scientists, planners, governments, and some coastal communities, the name is still relatively unfamiliar to many residents of Washington (WA) and British Columbia (BC). This lack of familiarity is highlighted by a new study released by the SeaDoc Society and Oregon State University. The study builds upon interdisciplinary research focused on geographic literacy and toponymy (study of place names) with the intention of illustrating what residents call and know about the shared transboundary Salish Sea.
Geographic literacy refers to, “the ability to understand, process, and utilize spatial data,” and includes geographic knowledge (e.g.: What do people know about a place? Do people know place names?) and geospatial recognition (e.g.: Can people identify or locate a place on a map?) (Turner and Leydon 2012, p. 54). Geographic literacy and awareness are often assessed by the National Geographic Society (Council on Foreign Relations and National Geographic Society 2016; Roper Public Affairs 2006) and American Geographical Society (Kozak et al. 2013, 2015). According to the National Geographic Society, geographic literacy, including of place names, is integral to making place-dependent decisions (Edelson 2014). Place names inform and contribute to sense of place, including an individual’s place attachment, identity, dependence, meaning, and behaviors (Cresswell 2015; Helleland 2015; Masterson et al. 2017). Building upon this research, Dr. David J. Trimbach of Oregon State University, a trained geographer, developed a geographic literacy survey with an emphasis on place names (e.g.: Salish Sea) in collaboration with the SeaDoc Society.
Using Qualtrics survey software and stratified sampling to ensure generalizability, Trimbach solicited responses from approximately 2,405 (n) Washington and British Columbia residents. Residents were asked targeted close-ended questions focused on geographic knowledge and geospatial recognition. Responses were analyzed to highlight demographic attribute relationships and predictors with an emphasis on place of residence (e.g.: Does living in WA or BC relate to and/or predict specific geographic literacy question responses or response patterns?).
Overall, the survey’s findings illustrate a low and/or lack of geographic literacy among Washington and British Columbia residents when it comes to the Salish Sea. Survey participants’ responses reflect a general lack of geographic knowledge and geospatial recognition when it comes to the Salish Sea place name. Residents do recognize that the waterbody is comprised of saltwater, but do not necessarily share descriptive language.

Image 1: Map shown in survey.

This level of geographic literacy is illustrated by response patterns to a map-based question that sought to solicit geospatial recognition among survey participants. When asked to identify the body of water illustrated on a map (Image 1) by name, BC and WA residents’ responses differed significantly. Over 50% of WA residents identified the body of water as “Puget Sound” and 36% of BC residents selected the “Strait of Georgia” (Figure 1). “Salish Sea” was marginally selected by WA (9%) and BC (15%) residents (Figure 1). Based on the responses, there was a significant and strong association between place of residence (BC/WA) and place name identification when prompted with a map. This significant and strong association demonstrates variation in how residents visualized or mentally mapped the region’s bodies of water. This association also illustrates that place of residence mattered when it came to how participants identified water bodies on a map. This association was also illustrated elsewhere and reflected that place of residence was a major predictor of responses among survey participants.

Figure 1. Place Name Responses to Map (Image 1)

Overall, the survey’s findings indicate inconsistent place names, that may equate to inconsistent, divergent, or conflicting understandings of place (geographic literacy and sense of place) more broadly. Since the Salish Sea remains unfamiliar for many WA and BC residents, there does not seem to be a unifying and shared place name for the transboundary sea, that likely may inform regional planning, management, outreach, research, and education efforts aimed at improving the Salish Sea’s ecosystem. Trimbach recommends a multi-strategy approach, including: Salish Sea-focused targeted communications, education, outreach, and research; collaboration with partners to emphasize common geographic/place name language; and survey replication in the future to track change in the region. Some strategies stem from formal geographic education and literacy efforts; however, geographic education extends far beyond the classroom. As Trimbach notes, “Geographic literacy and place names matter, particularly when it comes to mobilizing communities and decision-makers around complex place-dependent problems. If communities are not sharing place names or understandings of place itself, such problems may be more difficult to collectively communicate and solve.” Improving and/or expanding geographic literacy and shared place names is one of many steps that can help improve the Salish Sea’s ecosystem.
References
Council on Foreign Relations and National Geographic Society. 2016. What College-Aged Students Know About the World: A Survey of Global Literacy. New York: Council on Foreign Relations.
Cresswell, T. 2015. Place: an introduction. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Edelson, D. C. 2014. Geo-Literacy [National Geographic Society online article.]. Available at:
Helleland, B. 2012. Place Names and Identities. Oslo Studies in Language. 4 (2): 95-116.
Kozak, S. L., Dobson, J. E., Wood, J. S., Wells, W. R., and Haynes, D. 2013. The American Geographical Society’s Geographic Knowledge and Values Survey: Report of Results for the United States. Brooklyn, NY: The American Geographical Society.
Kozak, S. L., Dobson, J. E., Wood, J. S. 2015. Geography’s American constituency: results from the AGS geographic knowledge and values survey. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education. 24 (3): 201-222.
Masterson, V. A., Stedman, R. C., Enqvist, J., Tengö, M., Giusti, M., Wahl, D., and Svedin, U. 2017. The contribution of sense of place to socio-ecological systems research: a review and research agenda. Ecology and Society. 22 (1): 49.
Roper Public Affairs. 2006. National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs: 2006 Geographic Literacy Study. New York: GfK NOP.
Turner, S. and Leydon, J. 2012. Improving Geographic Literacy among First-Year Undergraduate Students: Testing the Effectiveness of Online Quizzes. Journal of Geography. 111: 54-66.
Dr. David Trimbach is a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. Dr. Joe Gaydos is Science Director at The SeaDoc Society, part of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.