FY 2013 South Sound Prioritization

Information from the pocket estuary database, the WRIA 13 and 14 juvenile salmonid nearshore project selection tool (NPST), the PSNERP Puget Sound change analysis, watershed data from the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC) and the county based shoreline inventory was used to devise a habitat based focused restoration and conservation strategy for Case Inlet. Nearshore drainage catchments were identified and rated for level of development and human disturbance using the NOAA C-CAP development database. Contiguous catchments with similar ratings for landscape based strategies for: conservation, restoration, enhancement, and creation were crafted. The information generated is already being used by policy level personnel, planners, and on the ground restoration and conservation groups to rank and identify actions in a landscape context.

Previous efforts in the nearshore have focused on identifying individual project sites. The partners have developed the Juvenile Salmonid Nearshore Project Selection Tool (NPST) which identifies priority shorelines hypothesized to be important for juvenile coho, this species of interest for recovery actions in Deep South Sound. However, the NPST does not take into account the landscape context nor the size/scope of the project.
In order to ensure high priority projects are being selected, South Sound ShoreZone units (reaches) will be prioritized based upon the Nearshore Project Selection tool along with the landscape analysis. The information generated will provide a strategy to policy level personnel, planners, and on the ground restoration and conservation groups to rank and identify actions in a landscape context.
The goal of this exercise is to provide decision makers with explicit project level information that is in a landscape/inlet context taking into account stressors for juvenile salmon. This will help ensure that habitat projects selected occur in areas rated as high priority for juvenile salmon and have a high likelihood of being successful and self- maintaining over time.
Priority areas will be mapped for beneficial attributes of: wetlands, marine riparian cover, forage fish spawning, pocket estuaries, stream mouths, intertidal vegetation, and feeder bluffs. Attributes acting as stressors that will be mapped include: 303(d) listed waters, toxic sites, shoreline armoring, nearshore fill, marinas, docks, boat launches and piped outfalls. Priority ShoreZone units will be prioritized for conservation to prevent stressors and restoration if stressors are present.
This project is hypothesized to benefit primarily natal coho but does also benefits juvenile Chinook from throughout Puget Sound that have been documented using Case Inlet for late spring and summer rearing. We will identify habitat that is at high risk of conversion with potential losses in habitat complexity through reductions of nearshore forest cover; wood and sediment recruitment; or other nearshore habitat attributes like tidal beach wetlands. One example is a bulkhead removal, which would reestablish natural processes with respect to sediment transport. This can increase spawning habitat for salmonid prey species thereby increasing their abundance which in turn benefits the abundance of productivity of juvenile salmon.