Puget Sound Federal Task Force: Coordinating, leveraging and prioritizing diverse federal programs toward a healthy and sustainable Puget Sound

The Puget Sound Federal Task Force (PSFTF) panel at the 2022 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference will include presentations and an opportunity for discussion on current priority U.S. federal actions to protect and restore Puget Sound. PSFTF Co-chairs will provide an overview, including the role and relationship to treaty protected rights and resources. PSFTF Subteam Leads will highlight federal work on cross-cutting actions; fish passage; nearshore and shorelines; floodplains, riparian habitat, and estuaries; shellfish; stormwater; and science and monitoring. As background, with the Puget Sound Congressional delegation, Puget Sound Partnership, tribes and others recognizing that formal program and budget coordination at the federal level was needed to effectively protect and restore Puget Sound and Treaty protected resources, the White House Council on the Environmental Quality led nine federal Cabinet Secretaries and agency directors to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) forming the PSFTF. The MOU, signed in November 2016, outlines the structure of the PSFTF and the charge to PSFTF agencies to develop Action Plans on a rolling 5-year basis. The PSFTF is comprised of 13 federal agencies and co-chaired by EPA and NOAA. The PSFTF MOU, Action Plans and Progress Reports are available online at: https://www.epa.gov/puget-sound/puget-sound-federal-task-forc

The Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio Model

Bill Labiosa will present the Puget Sound Ecosystem Portfolio Model, which is a regional tool for supporting ecological restoration planning. He will outline the background and context of the project, describe development scenarios for Puget Sound, discuss the regional assessment approach and various models, review some results, and consider next steps.U.S. Geological Survey's Western Geographic Science Center. Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel

Puget Sound federal task force: federal coordination and collaboration on Puget Sound science and monitoring

Federal agencies have extensive expertise, capabilities and access to national and regional capacity for fundamental science and monitoring programs to support Puget Sound ecosystem recovery. Credible and salient scientific information and technical support are needed at the regional, sub-regional, and local levels to support recovery planning and implementation processes, address policy barriers, and inform the best next steps for recovery. While in many major coastal ecosystem recovery efforts, there are well-organized federal/state/local science enterprises that support recovery planning and implementation efforts, Puget Sound does not yet have a formal dedicated structure for effectively integrating federal science and monitoring expertise and capabilities for this purpose. In this presentation, the speaker will describe efforts to better integrate federal science and monitoring through the Puget Sound Federal Task Force Science and Monitoring work group and discuss the work group\u27s efforts to 1) determine interim steps that could be taken to help address critical science and monitoring gaps with current resources and capacity; 2) develop a process for prioritizing current and planned federal science and monitoring activities that are consistent with Puget Sound recovery needs; and 3) collaboratively develop options for developing a Federal Puget Sound Science Program that brings to bear federal scientific and technical expertise and capacity to support collaboration, leveraging, and science needs for Puget Sound recovery. The speaker will also preview Federal Task Force Science and Monitoring work group activities and priorities for 2018

Puget Sound Pressures Assessment -- What stressors most affect Puget Sound recovery and long-term protection? How is this information being used?

The 2014 Puget Sound Pressures Assessment (PSPA) was an effort commissioned by the Puget Sound Partnership’s Science Panel to better understand the stressors on the Sound’s freshwater, marine-nearshore, and terrestrial resources and identify the critical vulnerabilities that should be addressed to ensure sustainable long-term protection and recovery. The assessment rated the vulnerability of 60 ‘endpoints’ – which are discrete species, habitat types, landforms, or ecological processes – to 47 ‘stressors’ – which are the human and natural processes that are the proximate agents for change to the Puget Sound ecosystem. Key findings include: stressors with the most potential for harm and endpoints that are most vulnerable to harm (intrinsic vulnerability), relative uncertainty about stressor-endpoint relationships, current stressor intensity for geographic assessment unit and Sound-wide, and potential impact of stressors at the assessment unit and Sound-wide scales. Two land cover conversion stressors and two non-point pollution stressors are highly rated in both intrinsic vulnerability and potential impact. Throughout 2015 Partnership staff used PSPA findings to update its evaluation of ecosystem recovery processes and communicated PSPA findings to guide a number of entities’ decisions about priority stressors and sources of stress. The Partnership has also begun to use the PSPA findings as the foundation of a climate vulnerability assessment. These uses of the PSPA findings provide insights into some of the benefits provided by the assessment, limitations and challenges in supporting decisions about priority stressors and sources of stress, and the most-pressing improvements to the 2014 effort and products