Puget Sound Marine Waters 2021 Overview
Each year, the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program (PSEMP) releases a Puget Sound Marine Waters Overview, a report combining a wealth of data from numerous comprehensive environmental monitoring programs. The latest report provides an overview of marine conditions in 2021 and represents the collective effort of 76 contributors from federal, tribal, state, and local agencies, academia, nonprofits, and private and volunteer groups.
Overview
This report provides a collective view of 2021 Puget Sound marine water quality and conditions and associated biota from comprehensive monitoring and observing programs. While the report focuses on the marine waters of greater Puget Sound, additional selected conditions are also included due to their influence on Puget Sound waters. These include large-scale climate indices and conditions along the Washington coast. It is important to document and understand regional drivers of variability and patterns on various timescales so that water quality data may be interpreted with these variations in mind, to better attribute human effects versus natural variations and change. This is the eleventh annual report produced for the PSEMP Marine Waters Workgroup. Our message to decision makers, policy makers, managers, scientists, and the public who are interested in the health of Puget Sound follows.
