Puget Sound Vital Signs

Tag: Puget Sound Vital Signs

Golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa). Photo: Minette Layne (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Golden-crowned kinglets in Puget Sound have seen a steep decline since 1968

The number of golden-crowned kinglets in the Puget Sound watershed has declined by more than 91% over a recent 50-year period, according to data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The data was reported by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which tracks the information for the Puget Sound Partnership’s terrestrial bird indicator. The indicator was established to monitor the health of Puget Sound’s species and food webs.
The findings come amid widespread bird declines across North America. Overall, bird numbers across the Continent dropped by almost 30% over the last half-century, a loss of more than three billion birds that biologists in the journal Science called “staggering.”
The figures for Puget Sound show an even steeper rate of decline for the kinglets, which inhabit Puget Sound’s interior forests. Over the 50-year period from 1968 to 2018, golden-crowned kinglets declined by an average of 4.78% per year, according to WDFW biologist Scott Pearson, who compiled the information for the Partnership’s terrestrial bird population abundance indicator. That amounts to a population loss of 91.36% over the duration of the survey. The declines were measured in “routes that occur, or partially occur, within the Puget Sound watershed,” according to the Partnership’s website.

Map of North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) routes that occur, or partially occur, within the Puget Sound watershed.

The golden-crowned kinglet is described by the American Bird Conservancy as “one of the world’s smallest perching birds,” and lives in Puget Sound’s coniferous forests year-round. It feeds mostly on insects in trees and shrubs and must eat almost constantly to feed its high metabolic rate. It is one of three normally common forest species measured by the Partnership’s Vital Sign indicator. The other forest indicator species include the varied thrush, which declined by less than 1% per year over the study period, and the brown creeper which saw moderate increases of about 2% per year. The Vital Sign indicator takes an average of the status of all three birds as a way of measuring the health of the food web in interior forest habitats. Driven by the drop in kinglets, the overall indicator showed a decline of 46% over 50 years.
Other bird species measured by the indicator are several “human-associated species” including the American crow, European starling, rock pigeon, house finch and house sparrow. Biologists say those birds adapt more easily to human development and can nest on human structures or eat discarded food in garbage. On average, those birds were more stable but still declined as a group by 8%. The Partnership has classified the status of the terrestrial bird abundance Vital Sign indicator as “Getting Worse.”
According to Pearson, the decline in kinglets is “not well understood” but could be driven by factors such as loss of forest habitat and pressures from climate change leading to forest fires or increasing winter storminess.
The decline in forest birds tracks roughly with the Partnership’s Land Cover and Development Vital Sign indicator which shows an estimated decline in forest habitat in Puget Sound of 836 acres per year. “To the region it [forest bird declines] suggests that we are losing our predominant land cover,” Pearson says.
Percent change per year (1968-2018) in population abundance of three forest interior bird species. (Graph courtesy of the Puget Sound Partnership and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.)

Kinglets are also prone to die-offs during severe winter events such as ice storms. “If trees freeze up, the birds can’t get to the bugs to eat,” Pearson says. “We have had a number of unusual winter events,” a phenomenon that is predicted to increase in frequency, according to climate change models.
While golden-crowned kinglets have dropped precipitously in Puget Sound and are declining generally, they are still relatively common across North America. “It’s hard to imagine we would get to a world without kinglets,” says Pearson.
However, the story of the golden-crowned kinglet in Puget Sound may be one of many playing out across North America. According to the 2019 article in Science  that described the massive loss of billions of birds across the Continent, the declines “are not restricted to rare and threatened species—those once considered common and wide-spread are also diminished.”
One positive sign for the kinglets may be that the loss of forest habitat in Puget Sound, while still ongoing, is less severe than it has been in previous years. According to the Partnership, forest declines in the watershed have dropped to about 38% of what they were in the early 2000s. “If this decline in habitat loss continues, it will be interesting to see if the rate of forest associated bird populations begins to stabilize,” Pearson and his colleagues wrote on the Partnership’s website.

The current Vital Signs wheel. Image courtesy of the Puget Sound Partnership.

Puget Sound Leadership Council revises list of ‘Vital Sign’ indicators

It was ten years ago this summer that the Puget Sound Partnership first established what it called Puget Sound’s ‘Vital Signs,’ 25 indicators of Puget Sound health ranging from levels of toxic chemicals in fish to the abundance of Chinook salmon and southern resident orcas. Those indicators have now been revised and expanded, setting off a new chapter for Puget Sound recovery efforts. 
The Vital Signs and their indicators have been central to Puget Sound policy since their inception in 2010. They were designed to help scientists and policymakers measure the health of something seemingly unmeasurable: A giant estuary the size of a small state with thousands of different species and more than a thousand miles of winding shoreline.
Scientists knew it would be impossible to measure every aspect of the environment— Puget Sound was just too complex — so they began looking for ways to track what might be considered the ecosystem’s most vital components. In much the same way that a doctor will take a person’s pulse to see if that person’s heart is healthy, scientists began looking for the pulse of Puget Sound. Could an abundance of forage fish indicate the overall health of the food web? Could cleaner water and healthier beaches translate to more and healthier salmon? Tracking these indicators would help officials tell the public how their work was going, but it would also be used to direct funding and other resources. From the beginning, however, there was a debate about which and how many indicators to include.

Chinook salmon are among the original Vital Sign indicators established by the Puget Sound Partnership. Photo: Michael Humling, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

“In my experience, there has always been a lot of tension about whether you can pick just a few things and be specific or whether it is such a large ecosystem that you need more measures,” says Scott Redman, the Partnership’s science and evaluation program director. Some scientists argued that more measures would be more accurate while others argued that too many would be unwieldy.
Some of the tension grew out of the Vital Signs’ dual purpose to both inform the public and to inform the recovery efforts themselves. “This is what drives what you do,” says Ron Thom, the Partnership’s senior science advisor who called the process of picking the Vital Signs “pretty darn critical.”
From a communication perspective a smaller number of indicators was seen as easier to explain and understand. While some in the region called for more than a hundred — something similar to recovery plans for other large ecosystems such as the Great Lakes — others, including members of the Leadership Council, advocated for as few as ten. Eventually, the Partnership landed somewhere in the middle, identifying the 25 biophysical indicators that have become familiar on its Vital Sign wheel and addressed every two years in the agency’s State of the Sound report.
But debate over the number of indicators persisted. Some indicators proved hard to measure and there were gaps for certain key species. Not all salmon were included, for example, just the endangered Chinook, causing some disconnects with the region’s other salmon recovery work. In 2012, the Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS) recommended that the agency take another look at the Vital Signs, prompting a nearly eight-year process of re-scoping and evaluation by the Partnership.
Earlier this month, on June 10th, the review process concluded with the unanimous approval of a revised set of Vital Signs by the Partnership’s Leadership Council [view related materials].  The scientists involved with the revisions say the new indicators focus more on ecological function than specific pressures and more closely align with the recommendations from the WSAS.
Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana), the only surface canopy species in the Puget Sound, observed in March 2018. Photo: Brian Allen
Kelp has been added to the revised list of Puget Sound Vital Sign indicators. Photo: Brian Allen

The number of biophysical indicators has increased from 25 to 36, with 17 more indicators under consideration for future adoption. Most previous habitat, water quality and species Vital Signs were maintained. The more recently established Human Wellbeing Vital Signs were not considered in the revision process and also remained intact.
“By working with the expert community, we really came to the conclusion that if we wanted these to be the shared measures, we needed to add more,” says Redman. The fact that most of the indicators were maintained also “affirmed the decade ago selection in almost every case,” Redman says. “It’s not like we made bad decisions in the past. We have just added more indicators.”
Some areas of the Vital Signs were also recategorized or combined. Notable changes include:

  • A new “beaches and marine vegetation” Vital Sign, which combines eelgrass and shoreline armor removal as well as pocket estuaries into a single category. The new marine vegetation category will continue to include eelgrass but will allow for the inclusion of other critical species such as kelp.
  • The Chinook salmon category will now include all of the region’s salmon species.
  • Overall, the number of species and food web indicators was expanded to include groundfish, benthic invertebrates, forage fish and zooplankton.
  • The category for measuring toxics in fish became ‘Toxics in Aquatic Wildlife’ to be more inclusive of other species.
  • The indicator for onsite sewage was removed.

The new Vital Sign indicators also more directly address the impacts of climate change and rising CO2. The Water Quality Vital Sign now measures river and stream temperatures, a significant factor for spawning salmon. The Habitats and Water Quantity category now has an indicator for frequency of flood events, and an ocean acidification indicator has been added to the category for Marine Water Quality.
One of the most significant changes coming out of the revision process will not be seen in the indicator list itself, but in the way that the indicators are measured. Sandra O’Neill, a research scientist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife who has been advising the Partnership on the Vital Signs revisions since 2013, was enthusiastic about the adoption of what are known as “intermediate progress measures,” which she called “the missing link” for the adaptive management cycle. She said some indicators such as the numbers of southern resident orcas don’t typically change quickly enough for managers or scientists to know if recovery work is having an effect. Vital Signs and indicators are meant to describe “ultimate outcomes,” according to the Partnership, but if some of those goals take many years to achieve, that may not be a helpful measure for day to day recovery efforts.
The new system will now include better ways of measuring progress in the short term, O’Neill said. Instead of simply focusing on a recovery goal of 94 orcas, for example, scientists could also measure conditions that benefit orcas along the way, such as diminished ocean noise or measurable increases in food supply. These sorts of intermediate goals have not yet been established, but “this is the first time that the process has really been formalized,” O’Neill said.
The Partnership says the next step in the revision process will be to bring in more scientists to monitor the indicators and to evaluate where assessment and reporting will be needed. The Partnership will start reporting on the new indicators after monitoring of the old Vital Signs is completed in 2022.

Benthic invertebrates range in size from those easily seen with the naked eye to those that cannot be spotted without the use of a microscope. Photo: Christopher Dunagan

Are some streams in Puget Sound getting cleaner?

Scientists are reporting some potentially good news about the health of Puget Sound’s streams. Ten years of data from 126 stream sites within King County have shown a slight improvement in water quality, according to the county’s Water and Land Resource Division.
The study examined the variety of insects and other invertebrates that were collected from stream sediments. Twenty-one percent of the streams showed an increase in sensitive stream bugs in 2019, earning them a higher score on what is known as the Benthic Index of Biotic Integrity, or B-IBI for short. B-IBI scores for 79% of the additional study sites remained stable, according to King County.
The index is based on the concept that the healthier a stream is, the more invertebrates it will support. Streams are given a score from 0 to 100 based on the number of invertebrates found in a sample, with higher scores given when especially sensitive invertebrates are found that might not survive in certain polluted conditions.
Not all the news was good as more than half the stream sites scored from “fair” to “very poor,” but scientists call the marginal improvement unexpected because it comes at a time when urban development is increasing and putting more strains on the environment.
“It was quite surprising when you consider the overall trend toward increasing urbanization,” says Kate Macneale, an environmental scientist at King County involved with the studies. Scientists were expecting to see fewer bugs due to pollution from stormwater runoff and other sources that find their way into streams, she said.
“We joke that nobody has spent more time trying to figure out what is wrong with their dataset,“ Macneale said.
Does this mean cleanup efforts are starting to show results?
“We don’t know for sure,” but the trends are welcome, says Macneale. An October 2018 fact sheet about the studies describes similar results last year and says scientists are “cautiously optimistic” about the findings.
You can read more about B-IBI on the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound. The Puget Sound Partnership has designated B-IBI as an indicator of stream health throughout Puget Sound.
— Jeff Rice, Puget Sound Institute

Puget Sound Vital Signs wheel

The state could be revising its Puget Sound ‘Vital Signs’

By Jeff Rice
The Puget Sound Partnership is re-evaluating the way it measures the health of Puget Sound. A newly published study could greatly expand the Partnership’s portfolio of Vital Signs, a collection of health indicators for the Puget Sound ecosystem that have been central to state and federal funding and planning.
A key goal of the state’s Puget Sound recovery strategy has been to identify and focus on the most critical areas of concern for the ecosystem. The Partnership, the state agency coordinating the effort, has officially adopted 47 such categories — known as indicators — ranging from orca recovery to removal of shoreline armoring. Those indicators have been at the core of the state’s Puget Sound work plan, but a review by the Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS) found “significant flaws and inconsistencies in the process” used to select them, according to the report.
The WSAS faulted the current Vital Signs as being too narrowly focused while “a sufficient number of key attributes for the Puget Sound system were not measured,” the report said. It also took issue with some of the indicator evaluation criteria.
In response, the new study was commissioned by the Partnership to examine and refine its monitoring categories based on a process recommended by the WSAS. The resulting report keeps most of the existing indicators in place but identifies 19 new ones. Among these are warming temperatures and changing snow pack due to climate change, ocean acidification, a zooplankton index and the widespread deaths of coho salmon from stormwater known as “pre-spawn mortality.”
Additional proposed indicators include: Monitoring of the extent of wetlands and forested marine shoreline, river and stream habitat, estuary area and function, frequency of flooding events, the timing of peak stream flows, monitoring of chlorophyll in marine waters and streams, pesticides in small streams, toxics in resident fish in lakes and rivers, and sediment supply to nearshore areas and rivers. Two indicators related to freshwater quality and sediment were removed or recategorized.
The report does not address an additional set of human wellbeing indicators that were established for Puget Sound in 2015.
The report is now being evaluated by the Partnership, which can decide to accept or refine the recommendations. The Partnership’s senior science advisor Ron Thom called the report “a fantastic piece of work” that will help the Partnership establish its monitoring criteria for the 2022 Action Agenda. But the recommendations are “not set in stone,” he said. “It’s a starting point for us to get into a process to nail down what needs to be monitored.”
Thom said he was still analyzing the report but wondered if the addition of 19 new indicators might make the already challenging process of monitoring 47 ecosystem indicators too unwieldy. “It’s a good question,” he said. “How can you do a good job on any of these with already limited funding?”
According to Thom, the Partnership could also go in the other direction and adopt fewer indicators. “We have to figure out what is essential,” he said. “Your heart is vital. Maybe your earlobe is not. There will be a lot of critical thinking about what is being measured and why.”

The State of the Sound: Looking ahead to 2020

2017 State of the Sound report cover
2017 State of the Sound report cover

By Jeff Rice, Puget Sound Institute
Ten years ago, then-governor Christine Gregoire set an ambitious goal to clean up Puget Sound by 2020. The talk of that time is still familiar. Puget Sound was in trouble then as it is now. Our resident orcas had diminished to dangerously low numbers and contaminants like PCBs and stormwater were well-known threats to the ecosystem.
Now, with 2020 less than three years away, we are learning that Puget Sound faces even more extensive problems than Governor Gregoire may have imagined. Ocean acidification was just a blip on the radar in 2007. New climate change studies show a suite of increasing threats, from higher than expected sea-level rise to low creek flows for salmon. Population growth in the region has since accelerated to an astonishing 1000 new residents per week.
Talk has started to change from “cleanup” to “resilience.” The state’s Puget Sound Partnership, designated by Governor Gregoire to lead the cleanup efforts, now says “many 2020 recovery targets will not be met,” and the Puget Sound Leadership Council says it’s time for “an honest, clear-eyed review of where we are and where we are headed.”
The Partnership’s 2017 State of the Sound report released last week outlines the latest progress on the state’s designated indicators of Puget Sound health, or “Vital Signs.” Targets for shoreline armoring, shellfish beds and floodplains have seen mild improvement, but are not expected to meet 2020 goals. Stormwater results are “mixed” while key indicators like orca and Chinook populations have lost ground, as have Pacific herring and marine birds like the marbled murrelet.
That’s the bad news, but the report also points to important progress. After ten years, managers and scientists know a great deal more about what we are up against. New implementation strategies are being designed to take what has been learned and apply it. There is renewed urgency on some fronts such as Chinook and orca recovery, with expected announcements from Governor Jay Inslee and acceptance of a series of “bold actions” proposed by area tribes. There is also a healthy acknowledgement that a recovery project of this scale takes time.
The Puget Sound region is as large or larger than some small states. It is twice the size of Connecticut and includes thousands of species and about 2500 miles of winding shoreline. The 13-year timeframe proposed by Governor Gregoire was often seen as aspirational and according to the report is shorter than timelines for other ecosystem recovery efforts of similar scale.* The report puts Chesapeake Bay’s coordinated efforts at 42 years and counting, and San Francisco Bay’s at 35 years.
*[Blog update 11/9/17: Founder and former Executive Director of the group People for Puget Sound Kathy Fletcher offers a different perspective, writing in a blog for Salish Sea Communications that “the [2020] goal was set more than 30 years ago by Washington State, in 1985 legislation that created the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority.” It is a fair point that Puget Sound recovery efforts have extended well beyond the past 10 years. Much of the language of 1985 and prior is echoed in the language of today, and you can see some of the origin and evolution of the state’s thinking in our collection of archived reports available in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.]
That doesn’t mean we should take the foot off the gas, say state leaders. “Course corrections must be identified and implemented soon to get Puget Sound on an acceptable recovery trajectory,” the Leadership Council writes. Given the current rate of habitat destruction and the growing threat of extinction for some species like Puget Sound’s resident orcas, there is an acknowledgement that managers don’t have the luxury of taking their time. The 2020 goal may have been aspirational, but the situation is no less urgent.

The State of the Sound: Looking ahead to 2020

2017 State of the Sound report cover
2017 State of the Sound report cover

By Jeff Rice, Puget Sound Institute
Ten years ago, then-governor Christine Gregoire set an ambitious goal to clean up Puget Sound by 2020. The talk of that time is still familiar. Puget Sound was in trouble then as it is now. Our resident orcas had diminished to dangerously low numbers and contaminants like PCBs and stormwater were well-known threats to the ecosystem.
Now, with 2020 less than three years away, we are learning that Puget Sound faces even more extensive problems than Governor Gregoire may have imagined. Ocean acidification was just a blip on the radar in 2007. New climate change studies show a suite of increasing threats, from higher than expected sea-level rise to low creek flows for salmon. Population growth in the region has since accelerated to an astonishing 1000 new residents per week.
Talk has started to change from “cleanup” to “resilience.” The state’s Puget Sound Partnership, designated by Governor Gregoire to lead the cleanup efforts, now says “many 2020 recovery targets will not be met,” and the Puget Sound Leadership Council says it’s time for “an honest, clear-eyed review of where we are and where we are headed.”
The Partnership’s 2017 State of the Sound report released last week outlines the latest progress on the state’s designated indicators of Puget Sound health, or “Vital Signs.” Targets for shoreline armoring, shellfish beds and floodplains have seen mild improvement, but are not expected to meet 2020 goals. Stormwater results are “mixed” while key indicators like orca and Chinook populations have lost ground, as have Pacific herring and marine birds like the marbled murrelet.
That’s the bad news, but the report also points to important progress. After ten years, managers and scientists know a great deal more about what we are up against. New implementation strategies are being designed to take what has been learned and apply it. There is renewed urgency on some fronts such as Chinook and orca recovery, with expected announcements from Governor Jay Inslee and acceptance of a series of “bold actions” proposed by area tribes. There is also a healthy acknowledgement that a recovery project of this scale takes time.
The Puget Sound region is as large or larger than some small states. It is twice the size of Connecticut and includes thousands of species and about 2500 miles of winding shoreline. The 13-year timeframe proposed by Governor Gregoire was often seen as aspirational and according to the report is shorter than timelines for other ecosystem recovery efforts of similar scale.* The report puts Chesapeake Bay’s coordinated efforts at 42 years and counting, and San Francisco Bay’s at 35 years.
*[Blog update 11/9/17: Founder and former Executive Director of the group People for Puget Sound Kathy Fletcher offers a different perspective, writing in a blog for Salish Sea Communications that “the [2020] goal was set more than 30 years ago by Washington State, in 1985 legislation that created the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority.” It is a fair point that Puget Sound recovery efforts have extended well beyond the past 10 years. Much of the language of 1985 and prior is echoed in the language of today, and you can see some of the origin and evolution of the state’s thinking in our collection of archived reports available in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.]
That doesn’t mean we should take the foot off the gas, say state leaders. “Course corrections must be identified and implemented soon to get Puget Sound on an acceptable recovery trajectory,” the Leadership Council writes. Given the current rate of habitat destruction and the growing threat of extinction for some species like Puget Sound’s resident orcas, there is an acknowledgement that managers don’t have the luxury of taking their time. The 2020 goal may have been aspirational, but the situation is no less urgent.

Implementation strategies will target Puget Sound ‘Vital Signs’

Implementation strategies are a framework to improve the heartbeat of Puget Sound
Implementation strategies are a framework to improve the heartbeat of Puget Sound

When a scientist wades into an eelgrass bed or measures the weight of a Chinook salmon, their connection to the environment is clear. Much of what we know as the ‘scientific process’ takes place on the ground at a local scale. Measurements and observations are made and extrapolated. Scientists get their feet wet.
But what do you do when you are studying an entire ecosystem? In the case of Puget Sound, you can’t wade — or even see – the whole thing. To some degree, such a large system is an abstraction. It is infinitely complex and unknowable, with thousands of species and countless other variables.
Here at the Puget Sound Institute, our scientists conduct plenty of on-the-ground research, but we also look at this big picture. In the fall of 2016 our team began working closely with other scientists funded by the EPA to establish what are known as Implementation Strategies. These strategies will identify and apply solutions to improve Puget Sound’s overall Vital Signs, a series of indicators established by the Puget Sound Partnership to measure the region’s health.
It is part of a “learn and adjust” approach known as adaptive management (read more about adaptive management on the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound). Adaptive management is gaining traction for ecosystem conservation worldwide and has played a central role in state and federal Puget Sound cleanup efforts since 2007.
PSI’s role will help to synthesize and analyze the state of the science for many of the Vital Sign indicators, and will provide recommendations for science-based solutions aimed at improving them. Watch for stories about the process in our Salish Sea Currents series in the coming weeks and months.

Implementation strategies will target Puget Sound ‘Vital Signs’

Implementation strategies are a framework to improve the heartbeat of Puget Sound
Implementation strategies are a framework to improve the heartbeat of Puget Sound

When a scientist wades into an eelgrass bed or measures the weight of a Chinook salmon, their connection to the environment is clear. Much of what we know as the ‘scientific process’ takes place on the ground at a local scale. Measurements and observations are made and extrapolated. Scientists get their feet wet.
But what do you do when you are studying an entire ecosystem? In the case of Puget Sound, you can’t wade — or even see – the whole thing. To some degree, such a large system is an abstraction. It is infinitely complex and unknowable, with thousands of species and countless other variables.
Here at the Puget Sound Institute, our scientists conduct plenty of on-the-ground research, but we also look at this big picture. In the fall of 2016 our team began working closely with other scientists funded by the EPA to establish what are known as Implementation Strategies. These strategies will identify and apply solutions to improve Puget Sound’s overall Vital Signs, a series of indicators established by the Puget Sound Partnership to measure the region’s health.
It is part of a “learn and adjust” approach known as adaptive management (read more about adaptive management on the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound). Adaptive management is gaining traction for ecosystem conservation worldwide and has played a central role in state and federal Puget Sound cleanup efforts since 2007.
PSI’s role will help to synthesize and analyze the state of the science for many of the Vital Sign indicators, and will provide recommendations for science-based solutions aimed at improving them. Watch for stories about the process in our Salish Sea Currents series in the coming weeks and months.