Estimates of harbor porpoise population size in the main basin of Puget Sound. This abundance will be derived from established methodology for marine mammal abundance estimation. Updates to abundance will provide current population levels as well as population trend information for harbor porpoise population size in Puget Sound. Porpoise population data.

This research was initiated by the Puget Sound Steelhead Technical Recovery Team to develop viability criteria for threatened Puget Sound steelhead and to support recovery planning of this species. It involves conventional population viability analysis (PVA) combined with decision support systems such as Bayesian Networks. These systems are parameterized with information on abundance, productivity, spatial structure, and diversity obtained from various sources, including PVAs of individual populations from time-series data of abundance, productivity, age structure, iteroparity, influence of resident fish on anadromous abundance, and influence of human activities such as hatchery production, harvest, and habitat alteration. The work will also focus on assessing status of these listed species every five years as part of NOAA Fisheries' coastwide status review updates for listed salmonids. These data will be outputs from life cycle models developed by the Puget Sound steehead recovery team to evaluate.

Tabular data that powers basic monitoring dashboards for the total population, housing and jobs for the City of Seattle. Each record represents the totals for each year since 2000 (and 1995) through the most recently available data. Includes the change from the previous year.

Estimates of harbor porpoise population size in the main basin of Puget Sound will be developed from analyses of small boat line transect visual surveys conducted in 2009 and 2010. A vessel-based line transect visual survey was conducted for marine mammals in the main basin of Puget Sound from Port Townsend to Pt. Defiance. Two observers collected sightings by species (as well as angle and distance) to allow for distribution and density-based estimates to be developed. Estimated population size in Puget Sound

Dashboard displaying population, housing and jobs data for the City of Seattle since 2000 through the most recently available data. Includes totals and change by year.Sources include: For population and housing the April 1 official population estimates are produced by the Washington State Office of Financial Management (OFM). OFM population estimates are cited in numerous statutes using population as criteria for fund allocations, program eligibility, or program operations, and as criteria for determining county participation under the Growth Management Act.For jobs the Washington State Employment Security Department, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) is a federal/state cooperative program that measures employment and wages in industries covered by unemployment insurance. Data are available by industry and county and used to evaluate labor trends, monitor major industry developments and develop training programs. These job estimates are from the March dataset from each year (chosen as a representative month when seasonal fluctuations are minimized). The unit of measurement is jobs, rather than working persons or proportional full-time employment equivalents. Employment by census tract totals are broken down by major sector only. To provide more accurate workplace reporting, the Puget Sound Regional Council gathers supplemental data from the Boeing Company, the Office of Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), and governmental units throughout the central Puget Sound region.

In 2023, the GDP of the Seatle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area amounted to ****** billion U.S. dollars, an increase from the previous year. The GDP of the United States since 1990 can be accessed here. Seattle metro area The Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington includes the city of Seattle, King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County within the Puget Sound region. About **** million people were living in the Seattle metro area, which is more than half of Washington's total population in 2021 (about **** million people). This makes the Seattle metro area the **** largest metropolitan area in the United States, by population. However, Seattle is in fourth place among the 20 largest metro areas in terms of household income, which stood at ****** U.S. dollars in 2019. This is by far more than the average household income in the United States. Household income in Washington is on a similar high level. In 2021, the federal state of Washington was ranked **** in terms of household income among the states of the U.S. The city of Seattle is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It has about ******* residents and is among the ** largest cities in the United States. Seattle has always been an important coastal seaport city and a gateway to Alaska. The importance of the city and metro area is also due to fact that some of the biggest companies worldwide started in Seattle during the 1980s. Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are still based in the Seattle area in the state of Washington.

The NWFSC OA team will model the effects of ocean acidification on regional marine species and ecosystems using food web models, life-cycle models, and bioenvelope models. Spreadsheet.

A dataset listing Washington cities by population for 2024.

File Geodatabase with population, household, housing, job estimates and forecasts to support planning. See the data in action - click here.

Population growth and the associated transformation of landscapes is a major management challenge for coastal ecosystems. Coastal conservation and management should be guided by social, cultural, economic, and ecological objectives, but integrative decision support tools appropriate for complex ecosystems remain underutilized. Evaluating alternative policies for objectives that span the interconnected terrestrial, freshwater, and estuarine habitats along coastlines is limited by the lack of appropriate quantitative tools and available data. We employed qualitative network models (QNMs) to evaluate multi-benefit outcomes of potential management interventions to address population growth and development using a case study of Puget Sound – a large, urbanized fjord-type estuary in Washington, U.S.A. With input from regional scientists and stakeholders, we developed a base conceptual model of the links among human stressors and ecosystem components across the terrestrial-freshwater-estuarine gradient of a generalized Puget Sound watershed. We simulated scenarios representing alternative strategies for accommodating human population growth, namely new development outside of urban centers versus redevelopment (densification) within urban centers, and characterized the responses of multiple recovery objectives and ecosystem stressors for each scenario. Of the urban redevelopment scenarios, reducing stormwater runoff and increasing green infrastructure provided the most favorable outcomes. On rural lands, limiting new development to existing transportation corridors and iincreasing floodplain and riparian habitat extent concomitant with new development produced similar outcomes. Moderate levels of coordinated interventions on both urban and rural lands had favorable outcomes for more ecosystem objectives compared to either moderate intervention applied separately. This study demonstrates the value of qualitative tools for cross-habitat evaluations of possible futures in complex ecosystem-based management systems.

Demographics of King County, Vashon Island, and Island County communities.

Populations and reporting groups used as baseline for Puget Sound Chinook salmon individual assignment and mixture modeling for inferring group-specific BKD infection rates.

Background Rural U.S. communities are at risk from COVID-19 due to advanced age and limited access to acute care. Recognizing this, the Vashon Medical Reserve Corps (VMRC) in King County, Washington, implemented an all-volunteer, community-based COVID-19 response program. This program integrated public engagement, SARS-CoV-2 testing, contact tracing, vaccination, and material community support, and was associated with the lowest cumulative COVID-19 case rate in King County. This study aimed to investigate the contributions of demographics, geography and public health interventions to Vashon’s low COVID-19 rates. Methods This observational cross-sectional study compares cumulative COVID-19 rates and success of public health interventions from February 2020 through November 2021 for Vashon Island with King County (including metropolitan Seattle) and Whidbey Island, located ~50 km north of Vashon. To evaluate the role of demography, we developed multiple linear regression models of COVID-19 rates using metrics of age, race/ethnicity, wealth and educational attainment across 77 King County zip codes. To investigate the role of remote geography we expanded the regression models to include North, Central and South Whidbey, similarly remote island communities with varying demographic features. To evaluate the effectiveness of VMRC’s community-based public health measures, we directly compared Vashon’s success of vaccination and contact tracing with that of King County and South Whidbey, the Whidbey community most similar to Vashon. Results Vashon’s cumulative COVID-19 case rate was 29% that of King County overall (22.2 vs 76.8 cases/K). A multiple linear regression model based on King County demographics found educational attainment to be a major correlate of COVID-19 rates, and Vashon’s cumulative case rate was just 38% of predicted (p<.05), so demographics alone do not explain Vashon’s low COVID-19 case rate. Inclusion of Whidbey communities in the model identified a major effect of remote geography (-49 cases/K, p<.001), such that observed COVID-19 rates for all remote communities fell within the model’s 95% prediction interval. VMRC’s vaccination effort was highly effective, reaching a vaccination rate of 1500 doses/K four months before South Whidbey and King County and maintaining a cumulative vaccination rate 200 doses/K higher throughout the latter half of 2021 (p<.001). Including vaccination rates in the model reduced the effect of remote geography to -41 cases/K (p<.001). VMRC case investigation was also highly effective, interviewing 96% of referred cases in an average of 1.7 days compared with 69% in 3.7 days for Washington Department of Health investigating South Whidbey cases and 80% in 3.4 days for Public Health–Seattle & King County (both p<0.001). VMRC’s public health interventions were associated with a 30% lower case rate (p<0.001) and 55% lower hospitalization rate (p=0.056) than South Whidbey. Conclusion While the overall magnitude of the pre-Omicron COVID-19 pandemic in rural and urban U.S. communities was similar, we show that island communities in the Puget Sound region were substantially protected from COVID-19 by their geography. We further show that a volunteer community-based COVID-19 response program was highly effective in the Vashon community, augmenting the protective effect of geography. We suggest that Medical Reserve Corps should be an important element of future pandemic planning. Methods The study period extended from the pandemic onset in February 2020 through November 2021. Daily COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths and test numbers for King County as a whole and by zip code were downloaded from the King County COVID-19 dashboard (Feb 22, 2022 update). Population data for King County and Vashon are from the April 2020 US Census. Zip code level population data are the average of two zip code tabulation area estimates from the WA Office of Financial Management and Cubit (a commercial data vendor providing access to US Census information). The Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed (ALICE) metric, a measure of the working poor, was obtained from United Way.

Population dynamics within species at the edge of their distributional range, including the formation of genetic structure during range expansion, are difficult to study when they have had limited time to evolve. Western Fence Lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis) have a patchy distribution at the northern edge of their range around the Puget Sound, Washington, where they almost exclusively occur on imperiled coastal habitats. The entire region was covered by Pleistocene glaciation as recently as 16,000 years ago, suggesting that populations must have colonized these habitats relatively recently. We tested for population differentiation across this landscape using genome-wide SNPs and morphological data. A time-calibrated species tree supports the hypothesis of a post-glacial establishment and subsequent population expansion into the region. Despite a strong signal for fine-scale population genetic structure across the Puget Sound with as many as 8–10 distinct subpopulations supported by th...

description: Partners from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Puget Sound University designed and manage this cooperative monitoring effort under an SUP. Design and methodology have been peer reviewed and published in the journal Condor (Pearson et al 2013). Refuge islands support the vast majority of Rhinoceros Auklets (Cerorhinca monocerata ) in Washington with most birds concentrated on 8 colonies including Destruction Island within Quillayute Needles NWR, Protection Island (PINWR) and Smith Island (SJINWR). To date, this survey has revealed that Protection Island now supports the third largest colony in North America with approximately 71,000 auklets or 4.8% of the global population (extrapolated from the estimated number of active burrows; Pearson et al 2010). With an estimated 12,000 breeding pairs, Destruction Island hosts the majority of the outer coast breeding population in WA while Smith Island, supports a relatively small auklet colony of approximately 1,500 pairs.With a low reproductive rate (one chick per year), prolonged incubation period and slow chick growth rate, it is important to monitor abundance of this species of High Concern (USFWS 2005) in order to detect declines as quickly as possible. This survey is one of the first steps in a multi-year adaptive management approach to removing deer from PINWR and restoring native vegetation. At issue is a high-density herd (58.4/km2) of Black-Tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus) that has colonized the island since 1990. Deer are browsing and bedding down in auklet burrow nesting habitat which has resulted in collapsed burrows and possible subsequent predation. Breeding population trends for auklets on PI will provide a measure of success for vegetation restoration in the colony and deer management efforts. Since 5 of 6 refuges in this Complex support the majority of breeding auklets in the State, these data are key to inform management actions on other refuges in the Complex as well (e.g. public-use closure and potential oil spill restoration projects associated with Natural Resource Damage Assessments or rabbit removal on Destruction Island).; abstract: Partners from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Puget Sound University designed and manage this cooperative monitoring effort under an SUP. Design and methodology have been peer reviewed and published in the journal Condor (Pearson et al 2013). Refuge islands support the vast majority of Rhinoceros Auklets (Cerorhinca monocerata ) in Washington with most birds concentrated on 8 colonies including Destruction Island within Quillayute Needles NWR, Protection Island (PINWR) and Smith Island (SJINWR). To date, this survey has revealed that Protection Island now supports the third largest colony in North America with approximately 71,000 auklets or 4.8% of the global population (extrapolated from the estimated number of active burrows; Pearson et al 2010). With an estimated 12,000 breeding pairs, Destruction Island hosts the majority of the outer coast breeding population in WA while Smith Island, supports a relatively small auklet colony of approximately 1,500 pairs.With a low reproductive rate (one chick per year), prolonged incubation period and slow chick growth rate, it is important to monitor abundance of this species of High Concern (USFWS 2005) in order to detect declines as quickly as possible. This survey is one of the first steps in a multi-year adaptive management approach to removing deer from PINWR and restoring native vegetation. At issue is a high-density herd (58.4/km2) of Black-Tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus) that has colonized the island since 1990. Deer are browsing and bedding down in auklet burrow nesting habitat which has resulted in collapsed burrows and possible subsequent predation. Breeding population trends for auklets on PI will provide a measure of success for vegetation restoration in the colony and deer management efforts. Since 5 of 6 refuges in this Complex support the majority of breeding auklets in the State, these data are key to inform management actions on other refuges in the Complex as well (e.g. public-use closure and potential oil spill restoration projects associated with Natural Resource Damage Assessments or rabbit removal on Destruction Island).

Pacific hake (Merluccius productus) is an abundant species residing along the Pacific coast from the Gulf of California to the Strait of Georgia. In Puget Sound, however, Pacific hake populations have declined dramatically in the past three decades, leading to a closure of the fishery in 1990 and a designation by NOAA Fisheries as a Species of Concern in 1999. Because Pacific hake feed on a variety of fishes and invertebrates, and are an important prey item (for sea lions, small cetaceans, and dogfish sharks), the decline of this mid-trophic level component has important ramifications for the functioning of the Puget Sound ecosystem.

In response to a petition to protect Pacific hake under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), a biological review team (BRT) concluded that the Puget Sound and Strait of Georgia stocks constitute a distinct population segment (referred to as the Georgia Basin DPS) under ESA. The BRT also concluded that the Georgia Basin DPS was not in danger of extinction, nor likely to become extinct in the foreseeable future because the Strait of Georgia stock has not declined in terms of biomass, fish size, or age at maturity. However, the species was listed as a species of concern by state and federal agencies because of the declines in the Puget Sound stock, the shift in key demographic traits, and uncertainties in the extent of mixing between stocks of the Georgia Basin DPS.

The issue of the magnitude of mixing between stocks is important because if mixing is limited, then the problems faced by the Puget Sound stock are more important for its potential recovery. The goals of this project are to use otolith microstructure and microchemistry to examine patterns of stock mixing and growth of Pacific hake within the Georgia Basin. Specifically, we aim to address the following questions:

1) What is the difference in size-at-age between Puget Sound and Strait of Georgia due to differences in early juvenile growth?

2) What is the rate of mixing between Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound hake?

Age, somatic growth, otolith chemistry

TAZ 2010 shapefile - Traffic Analysis Zones boundaries. TAZs are the geographies used in the travel demand modeling process. Demographic inputs are supplied at the TAZ level and the resulting model outputs include zone-to-zone trip tables and time or distance matrices. The TAZ 2010 system has 3700 zones and was constructed using aggregations of 2010 Census Blocks. It is the current TAZ system.

Original provider: Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife

Dataset credits: Data provider WA Dept of Fish & Wildlife Waterfowl Originating data center Satellite Tracking and Analysis Tool (STAT)

Abstract: The Northern Puget Sound (NPS) wintering population of lesser snow geese occurs in the Skagit and Fraser Deltas along the western border between the United States and Canada. This population of snow geese have traditionally used very discrete estuary and agricultural habitats associated with Skagit and Port Susan Bays.

The breeding grounds of this population are on Wrangel Island, Russia. Because Wrangel Island snow geese represent the last major snow goose population breeding in Asia, and the primary Russian goose population that winters in North America, it is a high priority for the Pacific Flyway and the subject of long standing international cooperative management and conservation. Data collected since the early 1970s on Wrangel Island indicates that the population has grown in abundance, become younger, and changed its behavior relative to traditional habitat and resources. These population changes have become more apparent since the early 1990s and appear to be in response to warmer spring conditions, earlier snowmelt, and changes in the predator community on Wrangel Island. Some of these changes are also evident in the NPS wintering population where the total overwintering population size has increased.

The objectives of this project are to examine the current relationship of the NPS population to other Pacific flyway use areas. This will include documentation of migration routes, phenology, staging areas, and stopover locations throughout the flyway. Particular questions that we hope to answer include:
- When do geese depart and return to NPS during spring and fall migration?
- Where are important flyway use areas during migration?
- When and how long do geese use areas along migration routes?
- Document inter and/or intra-year interchange among NPS and other wintering areas.
- Do some geese that use NPS move to other locations within the flyway during the same winter or among different years?
- If NPS geese are moving to other locations, what is the timing of emigration and potential return to NPS?

The transmitters are programed to transmit for three years.

Acknowledgments:
WDFW Biologist Roozen and Technicians Anderson, Deyo, and Otto were instrumental in the successful snow goose captures - without their untiring efforts and perseverance through poor weather conditions, deployment of the full sample of transmitters would not have been possible. We are especially grateful to Dr. Scott Ford of Avian Specialty Veterinary Services for his expertise and exceptional work with the transmitter implant procedures, and to WDFW Technician Deyo and Vet-Tech Yana Podobedova who assisted Dr. Ford with many of the procedures. We are also indebted to WDFW Waterfowl Section Manager Kraege for his support for this project; it is because of his efforts that project was able to take flight. We are grateful to the WDFW staff at the Skagit Wildlife Area for their continued support during our capture efforts. We would like to thank M. Axelson for caring for one of the geese that was unable to fly immediately after the capture - this goose quickly recovered and was able to take flight. Vasiliy Baranyuk provided flock sighting information which assisted us in determining where to focus capture efforts. We are also extremely grateful to the many landowners who were gracious in granting access to their lands.

Project PI's-
Joe Evenson - WDFW Waterfowl Survey and Sea Duck Specialist
Chris Danilson - WDFW District Biologist

Map of population islands within Puget Sound.

Percent change (95% Crl) in predicted murrelet density between the first and last year surveyed for each 2-month survey window and for the entire (Sep-Apr) non-breeding season.