Puget Sound

The purpose of this rain garden project is to help Snohomish Conservation District and the Cities of Edmonds and Lynnwood better understand Mandarin perspectives on rain gardens. Installing rain gardens in front yards will help filter the polluted stormwater before it runs into local water bodies. Rain gardens not only contribute to aesthetic, they also benefit the environment by slowing excess stormwater runoff into Puget Sound. This can improve water quality and the health of seafood coming from the Sound. The results we received from our online survey shows us clearly that majority of the people would like to install rain garden but with addition benefits either from financial help or future garden maintenance. All our participant are Mandarin Chinese, and Chinese people have the tendency to follow others/majority , so in this case getting other Chinese families involved in the same neighborhood around is also a key factor to success.

Rain gardens are shallow landscaped depressions that capture, clean, and absorb stormwater runoff from roofs, parking lots, and roads. Since rain gardens are needed in Snohomish County, our goal is to investigate the willingness of the Indonesian community to install a rain garden on their property. Community contributions to manage stormwater runoff are highly beneficial towards environmental issues such as flooding, pollution, water quality, and wildlife. Providing knowledge on rain gardens for the community is vital to the transition towards a more sustainable environment. Our data shows that the motivations of Indonesian community in Snohomish County for installing rain gardens are financial and environmental incentives, and their barriers are maintenance and insects. We conclude that the Indonesian communities living in Lynnwood, Edmonds, and Mukilteo, Washington, USA, are mostly willing to install rain gardens if their concerns are met.

The research area discussed in this chapter encom­passes what is considered to be the traditional territory of the Lushootseed speaking Coast Salish People, who are sometimes referred to as the Puget Sound Salish (e.g., Thompson and Kinkade 1990:38; Suttles and Lane 1990:485-502).1bis area begins at Samish Bay, east of the San Juan Islands, and extends southward to the head of Puget Sound, and includes the watersheds of numerous streams and rivers that drain from the Cascade Foothills into Puget Sound (Figure 1).

Comparatively speaking, few systematic ar­chaeological investigations have occurred in this part of the Pacific Northwest, so this paper should be considered a preliminary but much needed syn­thesis of over 4500 square miles of sheltered "inside" areas between the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges. The chipped stone projectile point sequence we will present covers the known sequence of lithic traditions in the study area, ranging from the Clovis period (approximately 11,000 BP) through to the time of European colonization.

Community-based participation is a vital component of municipal efforts to address water quality, reduce pollution, and enhance habitat in the Salish Sea basin. At the request of Nature Conservancy and Snohomish Conservation District, a team of researchers from Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, Washington have conducted a rapid ethnographic study of residents of the Perrinville watershed with the goal of helping the Cities of Edmonds and Lynnwood with their efforts to better manage stormwater and improve the ecology of these urban communities north of Seattle.

The results of an ethnographic analysis that included participant observation, informal interviews, and a door-to-door and online survey reveal a community eager to contribute to the efforts of their municipalities to address urgent environmental and stormwater management issues in the Perrinville basin. While most residents currently have lawns of grass, nine out of ten of them prefer the aesthetics and environmental benefits of diverse plants and flowers and are willing to contribute financially and via their own time and effort to the installation of rain gardens in public right of ways and their own yards. The residents do have some concerns about maintenance and would like a voice in placement, size, and selection of appropriate plants for rain gardens on their property. Most would need some financial incentives and technical assistance to be able to retrofit their properties or care for rain gardens in public right of ways but are willing to put some of their own money and labor into the effort. The community is clearly ready and willing to contribute to the efforts of their municipal governments to improve water quality, reduce flooding and pollution, and enhance environmental sustainability.

In an 1855 treaty at Point Elliott (bǝka’ltiu or Mukilteo, WA) the United States promised Coast Salish nations that they could continue to hunt and fish in their usual and accustomed places in perpetuity; yet logging, stream realignments, military installations, pollution, and transportation  infrastructure over the following century disrupted and impeded salmon access to local streams. A railroad spur built in the late 1960s to connect the waterfront railway to a Boeing plant above Japanese Gulch introduced additional barriers and by this time, if not sooner, humans had entirely blocked salmon access to the stream in the very shadows of the historic treaty. Students from Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, WA. joined a collaborative effort in 2012 led by the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport, in consultation with Tulalip Tribes and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, to remove four major barriers to salmon migration in Japanese Gulch. As its name suggests, this stream is not only important to the First Peoples of this land but also to descendants of immigrants from Japan who lived in lumber company housing in the gulch during the early twentieth century.

Urban streams and their associated riparian zones in western Washington contain important fish and wildlife habitat in the midst of extensive human activities. Community college students are enhancing their own learning while assisting cities, counties, and tribes with monitoring of plants and animals in these urban ecosystems. This report summarizes the results of in-stream salmon spawning, wildlife, and water quality surveys in two streams in the heart and edges of Mukilteo conducted between 2012 and 2018. Students, faculty, and staff from Edmonds CC have conducted these surveys in Japanese and Big Gulches in response to requests from the City of Mukilteo and Snohomish County Airport. The data collected help municipalities preserve and sustain places and species of significant cultural importance to Coast Salish tribes, Japanese-American communities, and other local residents.

The surveys demonstrate that small numbers of adult coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) have consistently come to Japanese Gulch to spawn for seven consecutive years. Chum returned to Japanese Gulch for just one out of seven years of observation. While stream restoration projects have opened the gulch to salmon, spawning in this stream is under threat from an invasive species, bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamera), that has overrun prime spawning habitat in restored sections of the stream.

Big Gulch, like Japanese Gulch, originates at Paine Field Airport and flows to the salt water of Puget Sound. Coho returned to Big Gulch for four out of six years of monitoring in this watershed. Chum (O. keta) have returned for five out of six years of monitoring but the numbers have been quite variable and were dramatically lower this year than the previous year. The variability of salmon runs in Big Gulch coincides with a similar volatility in water quality samples, suggesting that water quality remains the primary threat to the viability of salmon in this stream.

For the past five years, researchers from Edmonds CC have monitored the gulches for evidence of a troubling phenomenon of salmon, especially coho, dying before spawning in urban areas of the Puget Sound basin. For four out of five years, service-learners have documented pre-spawn mortality in Mukilteo streams. All three necropsies of female coho in Big Gulch in 2018 revealed evidence of pre-spawn mortality. In fact, three out of the four years that coho returned to Big Gulch, necropsies revealed 100% pre-spawn mortality resulting in a cumulative rate of 87.5% over five years of monitoring. Surveyors at Japanese Gulch found no dead female carcasses for analysis this year but over the same five years, pre-spawn mortality rates average just 40% in the recently restored stream. These local rates of pre-spawn mortality range from substantially to moderately higher than predicted by new prognostic models developed by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for forecasting premature deaths.

Recognizing salmon are part of a larger ecosystem, researchers from Edmonds CC document and maintain lists of wildlife observed in each basin. Prior to the beginning of this project, Mukilteo Wildlife Society already had a robust list of wildlife their members had recorded in Japanese Gulch. Teams of students, staff, and faculty have confirmed 13 mammals and 22 birds previously reported and added three each of additional mammals and birds as well as one amphibian to the list. At Big Gulch Saltwater Anglers of Mukilteo had documented seven species of mammals and birds in the 1990s, all of which researchers on this project have confirmed. They have also added 11 species of mammals, 17 species of bird, and one each of amphibians and reptiles (see appendix B). 

This year, 228 students, staff, faculty, and community members contributed to service-learning activities as part of this project, these include salmon surveys, wildlife monitoring, water quality investigations, and eMammal data entry. 24 of these researchers returned from involvement in previous years, while 204 were new to the project. Overall, 805 students, staff, and community members have contributed to this community-based service-learning partnership over the past seven years. Participation has grown in recent years as faculty and students at Edmonds CC recognize the value of assisting local municipalities in endeavors to restore and conserve fish and wildlife habitat, especially in culturally and ecologically sensitive areas. This project serves as an example of the value of community-based citizen science in filling the monitoring and assessment gap in current salmon restoration projects throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Salish Sea islands archaeology and precontact history are reviewed in light of Coast Salish history and the archaeological record. Our examination shows that (1) the ancestors of Salish people have occupied and used the archipelago continuously since its formation approximately 14,000 years ago; (2) archaeological work has not been conducted uniformly across the archipelago, resulting in places, landforms and times being differentially represented; and (3) as an inland seaway the Salish Sea basin is more geographically similar to the Mediterranean than the Pacific.

Fifty-eight juvenile Chinook salmon were collected from nearshore areas of the central and western Strait of Juan de Fuca, west of the Elwha River, between June and September 2007. Genetic analysis documented that 43% of these fish were Puget Sound Chinook salmon (Elwha/Dungeness reporting group), with 48% representing various Columbia River populations. The remaining 9% of the Chinook salmon observed were contributed by Washington Coastal and the Klamath Falls systems. These observations have important management implications as the National Marine Fisheries Service currently ends the Critical Habitat designation of nearshore habitat for the Puget Sound Chinook salmon population at the mouth of the Elwha River. It also supports long held belief that nearshore of the open coast of Washington is critical for salmon migration. Information supporting significant use of nearshore areas west of the Elwha River by listed Chinook salmon should result in revision of the Critical Habitat des...

... Derek B. Booth, James R. Karr, Sally Schauman, Christopher P. Konrad, Sarah A. Morley ... included three “urban” classes (intense, grassy, and forested); three predominantly vegetated classes (grass/shrub, decidu-ous, and coniferous); and open water (Hill et al., ...

Between October 1, 2009 and September 30, 2010 the Washington Watershed Education Teacher Training (WWETT) Program, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Bay Watershed and Training Program, offered sixteen marine-based professional development workshops, an online curriculum development course and support for meaningful watershed education activities with 163 educators involving 52 community partners and 75 college students and staff. The educators collectively serve more than 3,000 students and represent 77 different educational institutions. Outreach efforts have reached an additional 84 teachers, students and community partners. The positive results from the Workshop Survey and Looking Back Survey data affirm our direction after one year of WWETT program delivery. These results indicate that we delivered well-received workshop trainings which were relevant and valuable for participants, and which had a positive impact on our desired participant outcomes in a very short time frame. The data indicate that the factor most impacted by the workshop was participants’ knowledge and ability to access watershed education resources. Participants felt that hands-on learning experiences with experts is what worked best about the workshop.

The goal of the class project was to research the motivations and barriers for installing rain gardens among non-English speakers. The previous survey done on the motivations and incentives for installation of rain gardens was in English and targeted at the general Perrinville Creek Watershed population (Murphy, et al. 2016). Snohomish Conservation District reported that that establishing trust with and getting results from non-English speakers was a challenge. Perrinville Creek Watershed and greater Snohomish County have large populations of immigrants, people who speak other languages, and people from different cultures; whose specific needs should be considered when discussing installing rain gardens. Since lawns and gardens carry much cultural significance, it is likely that different ethnic communities have varying motivations and barriers when it comes to rain gardens. To investigate these differences, our class formed separate groups, each focusing on a common language spoken in Snohomish County.
The goal of our group was to figure out the motivations, incentives and barriers for Spanish Speakers for installing rain gardens. We hypothesized that once we were able to communicate with the Spanish speaking community, our results would be similar to the first English survey. We found that to be somewhat true, but there were also some significant differences such as the amount people were willing to pay.