Scott Redman, PSAMP Science Coordinator

Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team

The Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program (PSAMP) is a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary effort to assess the health of Puget Sound. This program was designed in the late 1980’s to evaluate the effectiveness of the Puget Sound Water Quality Management Plan, to investigate long-term trends in environmental quality, to improve decision making, and to prevent overlaps and duplications in monitoring activities.

Through this program, state, federal and local agencies coordinate their efforts to assess the quality of marine and fresh waters and marine sediments; evaluate toxic contaminants and their effects in fish, marine birds, and marine mammals; and study the status of nearshore habitats and marine bird and mammal populations. PSAMP is built around a coordinating structure that involves the staff and accesses the resources of eight implementing agencies, study designs developed from common goals to measure status and trends, and Puget Sound protocols for field and laboratory work.

PSAMP scientists and managers are currently implementing suggestions from a 1995 program review to improve the integration and breadth of PSAMP’s assessments and improve PSAMP’s links to management decisions. At the heart of the improved integration among monitoring efforts and between monitoring and decision-making is the articulation of a conceptual model of Puget Sound and the effects of human activities on the Puget Sound environment. To broaden the program’s assessments of ecosystem health and to move toward the vision of comprehensive evaluations, PSAMP scientists are placing new emphasis on efforts to share information with other scientists and researchers in the region.

The Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program is a long-term, comprehensive program to assess the health of Puget Sound and its resources. Approximately 10 years ago, the PSAMP was adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of the Puget Sound Water Quality Management Plan, to assess long-term trends in environmental quality, and to improve decision-making and prevent overlaps and duplication in monitoring efforts.

The PSAMP is implemented as coordinated studies by Washington state departments of Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, Health, and Natural Resources and King County’s Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team coordinates the program with the assistance of representatives of the implementing agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Through the studies that comprise the PSAMP, data on marine and fresh waters, fish, sediments, and shellfish in Puget Sound have been collected since 1989; surveys of nearshore habitat have been conducted since 1991; marine bird populations have been surveyed since 1992; and marine bird contamination has been studied since 1995.

The Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program (PSAMP) capitalizes on the expertise and efforts of individual agencies to answer questions about the health of the Sound. It is important to recognize, however, that this monitoring program cannot hope to contain all scientific knowledge and investigation concerning Puget Sound. Therefore the PSAMP acknowledges the importance of expanding upon its resources and incorporating and synthesizing information from a variety of sources.

Through day-to-day observations, many residents of and visitors to the Puget Sound basin are familiar with the remarkable diversity of Puget Sound’s shorelines, waters and living resources. This diversity provides vitality to the Puget Sound region and contributes to the high quality of life that residents and visitors enjoy in this unique natural environment. However, this diversity also complicates the answer to our questions about the health of Puget Sound.

To make sense of the many varied connections between human actions and their effects on the environment, PSAMP scientists drafted a "conceptual model" that describes their understanding of and assumptions about these connections. Figure 1 provides a general overview of this model. This model is based on fundamental relationships between humans and the environment—human actions can stress the environment; these stresses can alter parts of the ecosystem; and management activities can moderate the effects of human actions on the environment. In its more detailed forms, the conceptual model helps identify ecosystem components and environmental stresses that are important to monitor. It also helps communicate the relevance of monitoring results to managers of Puget Sound’s environment and resources.

Based on the model, the PSAMP identified monitoring topics that relate to specific ecosystem characteristics or human-influenced stresses on the environment:

• Biological Resources: What are the status and trends of Puget Sound’s biological resources?
• Physical Environment: Are the physical environments of Puget Sound changing and, if so, how do these changes affect Puget Sound’s biological resources?
• Toxic Contamination: What are the status and trends of toxic contamination in Puget Sound? How does toxic contamination affect the Sound’s biological resources and humans who consume them?
• Pathogens and Nutrients: What are the status and trends of pathogens and nutrients in Puget Sound? How do they affect the Sound’s biological resources?
• Human Health: What are the risks to human health from consuming seafood from Puget Sound?

These are big questions and broad topics. Each topic relates to many human actions and reflects on a number of management programs aimed at restoring and protecting Puget Sound. Monitoring for each topic is addressed through multiple PSAMP studies and additional assessments by other programs not affiliated with the PSAMP. Table 1 illustrates how the PSAMP integrates studies by monitoring topic. This integration supports synthesis of results and allows a variety of scientific perspectives to be presented in program reports.

As an ambient monitoring program, the PSAMP focuses on describing the state of the environment. This program cannot, and is not be expected to, delve deeply into questions about why the environment is in the state that we observe. When monitoring results point out significant changes in the health of organisms, the scientists involved in the PSAMP hope to communicate this information so that other programs can initiate research projects and specific investigations to uncover causes and better evaluate the nature of problems. Where information is available, the PSAMP can help begin this process by discussing "associated" findings that may relate to underlying causes. When possible, PSAMP reports present information on this type of association, identify suggested or known causes of observed problems, or refers to the work of others who are following up on the results of monitoring.

The PSAMP communicates its findings through the following publications and presentations:

• Agency reports—as part of their participation in the PSAMP, member agencies produce and disseminate technical reports on their PSAMP efforts. These reports are the primary publications of PSAMP findings.
• Puget Sound Update—the sixth Update (1998) has recently been completed. This report is intended to be accessible, yet comprehensive documentation of recent findings of the PSAMP. New editions of the Update will be produced every two years.
• Presentations at Puget Sound research conferences and at other scientific meetings,
• Puget Sound Notes—an occasional, technical newsletter for Puget Sound scientists.
• Sound Waves—a bi-monthly or quarterly newsletter for citizens of the Puget Sound region. Since late 1996 this newsletter includes a page devoted to recent findings of the PSAMP on the health of Puget Sound.

Data developed from PSAMP studies are also available to scientists and citizens upon request. Various electronic and hard copy formats are available via request to the principal investigator.

The results of PSAMP studies are used (with information from other sources) to address the five monitoring topics identified above. An example of the types of results developed by PSAMP’s studies under each of these topics can be seen in the titles of presentations made by program scientists earlier this year at the 1998 Puget Sound Research Conference.

• Status and Trends for Selected Diving Duck Species Examined by the Marine Bird Component of PSAMP

• Disease Screening of Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina) from Gertrude Island, Washington

• Floating Kelp Resources in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Coast of Washington
• Mapping Shorelines in Puget Sound II. Linking Biota with Physical Habitats
• Mapping Shorelines in Puget Sound III. Management Applications for Inventory and Monitoring
• Puget Sound Intertidal Habitat Inventory: Vegetation Mapping

• The Distribution and Structure of Soft-bottom Macrobenthos in Puget Sound in Relation to Natural and Anthropogenic Factors
• Marine Benthic Invertebrate Communities near King County’s Wastewater Outfalls

• Mapping Shorelines in Puget Sound I. A Spatially Nested Geophysical Shoreline Partitioning
• Probability-based Estimation of Nearshore Habitat Characteristics
• Puget Sound Intertidal Habitat Inventory: Shoreline Characteristics Mapping

• "The Puget Sound Signal" in the Public Evening Session on Local Effects of El Nino
• Variations in Residence (Flushing) Time in the West Bay of Budd Inlet, 1992-1994 Hydrographic Studies
• Assessing Sensitivity to Eutrophication Using PSAMP Long-term Monitoring data from the Puget Sound Region

• Toxicity of Sediments in Northern Puget Sound—A National Perspective
• Response of the P450 RGS Bioassay to Extracts of Sediments Collected from Puget Sound, Washington

• Trace Metal Contamination in Edible Clam Species from King County Beaches

• Factors Affecting the Accumulation of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Pacific Salmon
• Persistent Pollutants and Factors Affecting Their Accumulation in Rockfishes (Sebastes spp.) from Puget Sound Washington
• Geographic and Temporal Patterns in Toxicopathic Liver Lesions in English Sole (Pleuronectes vetulus) from Puget Sound and Relationship with Contaminant Concentrations in Sediments and Fish Tissues

• Contaminant Monitoring of Surf Scoters near Tacoma, Washington
• Elevated PCB Levels in Puget Sound Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina)

• Long-term Trends in Fecal Coliform Levels in Three South Puget Sound Bays and Links to Watershed Remedial Action
• Variation in Primary Productivity of Budd Inlet
• Sources of Variability in Water Quality Monitoring Data

• Temporal and Spatial Distribution of PSP Toxin in Puget Sound

In addition to the scientific findings of the PSAMP, the program has also provided some lessons related to the design and implementation of a coordinated multi-agency monitoring program. For example,

• Clearly state our goals and objectives for monitoring (e.g., what are we measuring and why?) and then evaluate monitoring efforts against these objectives to determine how well the monitoring is working.
• Strive to combine input from technical (scientific) and management perspectives to ensure that studies use the best possible designs (e.g., measure things that are important to people in ways that will provide useful information) given available budgets.
• Grow beyond characterizations of the current condition of the environment and geographic patterns (e.g., within Puget Sound) to improve descriptions of patterns over time, especially those that may be related to changes in resource management. For the PSAMP, discerning temporal trends has proven difficult over short time periods because of the "noisy" signal (variability) observed in many aspects of the Puget Sound natural environment.
• Communicating monitoring findings is crucial—a monitoring program’s work isn’t complete until results have been shared.

To continue efforts to improve the design and implementation of the program, the PSAMP committees look forward to advancing in new directions, including:

• Improving and expanding our collaboration with others, because the PSAMP alone cannot fully assess the health of Puget Sound.
• Reviewing the program every two years to allow the PSAMP to adapt to its findings and establish new directions and priorities in the Puget Sound Management Plan and Puget Sound Water Quality Work Plans.

• Focusing our reporting on monitoring topics and specific aspects of monitoring components that are directed to the diversity of PSAMP audiences.