Connecting nodes throughout the Salish Sea: a bottom-up approach to strengthening informed decision-making, policy making, and marine spatial planning

• Main Author: John, Bridget
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Western CEDAR 2020
• Subjects: Fresh Water Studies; Life Sciences; Marine Biology; Natural Resources and Conservation; Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://cedar.wwu.edu/ssec/2020ssec/allsessions/24; https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3082&context=ssec

The Salish Sea is an intricate coastal region that faces myriad anthropogenic challenges. With ocean acidification and warming, an expanding human population, and marine shipping traffic, it is clear that this biologically rich ecosystem requires tools and strategies that link science to policy and conservation actions. One of the core problems in the vast Salish Sea is a lack of connectivity and continuity across communities that conduct research, restoration, and marine spatial planning (MSP): often communities develop plans and policies in silos without sharing information or methods outside of their tight jurisdictions. The Howe Sound/Atl’ka7tsem Marine Reference Guide offers an approach to increase connectivity across community nodes within the Salish Sea using a bottom-up approach toward MSP. The Guide was created to bring together knowledge associated with Atl’ka7tsem’s (Squamish nation place name for Howe Sound) aquatic socio-ecological values into one comprehensive decision-support tool (an online map-based database) that will provide high resolution data to inform decision-making and influence policy associated with Atl’ka7tsem’s marine realm. To build this tool, we are collating existing data from citizen science databases and regional research and government entities, as well as creating new data using a unique combination of field surveys and community workshops. We are also collaborating with groups throughout the Salish Sea who are conducting similar bottom-up approaches to connect scientific knowledge with policy and decision-making, so as to build continuity across socio-ecological indicators, research methods, and technical platforms. Our end goal is to merge our project with other databases throughout the Salish Sea to produce one centralized interactive map that contains high-resolution data about regional nodes and supports comprehensive MSP, decision-making, and community education. Overall, this project will directly build capacity for decision-makers and communities to protect the Salish ...