Rising sea, rising threat: What Puget Sound risks

Rising oceans over the next century can be expected to swamp half of existing Puget Sound estuary beaches, swallow tideflats and alter the spawning habitat for herring, surf smelt and other fish, and could also wreak havoc with the Sound's food web, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation.

Using sea-level-rise scenarios projected by an international climate-change panel that met earlier this year, the environmental group predicts that thousands of acres of what are now freshwater marshes could become salt marshes — while other marshland may simply disappear.

The group says such changes could end up affecting everything from harbor seals and seabirds to wild shellfish such as butter clams and Olympia oysters.

The report reinforces findings scientists for the state and the University of Washington issued two years ago, which determined that climate change could affect Puget Sound dramatically over time.

So the latest report was greeted Tuesday as another important reminder that climate change threatens to upset the Sound's delicate ecosystem in unpredictable ways.

"It's not like one day we have a beautifully restored salt marsh and the next day it's inundated," said Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound, an environmental group. "It's gradual."

The sea-level estimates are based on the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has predicted that increasing global temperatures will cause oceans to rise about 2 feet by 2100.
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