Strategic Needs Assessment: Analysis of Nearshore Ecosystem Process Degradation in Puget Sound

This report characterizes the impacts of shoreline and watershed alterations on nearshore ecosystem processes, identifies the potential causes of observed ecosystem degradation, and assesses which of the identified problems most need to be addressed through restoration and protection actions.  To support this strategic needs assessment, a spatially explicit evaluation framework was created and applied to characterize the extent to which the observed distribution of stressors has degraded each of the 11 nearshore ecosystem processes evaluated.