What\u27s working to restore Puget Sound? Connecting investments, actions, and outcomes

Throughout Puget Sound, long-term funding and investment in recovery actions have resulted in measurable improvements. Results from individual projects have been reported anecdotally in terms of improved water quality, habitat condition and wildlife, and salmon populations. Yet our ability to report these positive outcomes to funding agencies has been limited. This is because information and results are scattered across databases maintained by multiple local, state, tribal, and federal agencies. Data sets are typically well curated, but not connected. We have developed a prototype of a web tool that combines information about actions and outcomes to demonstrate the value of investments for Puget Sound recovery. Working across agencies and data sets, our approach summarizes data at the subwatershed scale (HUC12), tests for changes in environmental condition using statistical meta-analysis, and illustrates how restoration and management actions are effective, or not, to nontechnical audiences, including funders, elected officials, and sponsors. The web application is a regional prototype that demonstrates how data collected from multiple organizations can be connected to measure change over time and scaled over larger and smaller watershed areas