The Salish Sea Bioregion encompasses an intricate network of inland marine waterways and their upland watersheds in Washington and British Columbia. The concept of a cohesive Salish Sea region has become a critical focal point for local bioregional education, research, restoration, conservation, and policy development.

However, the scarcity of accurate, cohesive, and easily available spatial data and thematic maps covering the entire bioregion is a critical impediment to these efforts. Working with transboundary geospatial data involves many challenges as datasets from different countries must often be spatially, temporally, and conceptually harmonized before they can be combined or directly compared.

The Salish Sea Atlas addresses this need in the form of a digital book with thematic chapters containing interactive maps, illustrations, interpretive text, and a suite of downloadable open access harmonized geospatial datasets.

You can learn more at: https://wp.wwu.edu/salishseaatlas/

About the Presenter

Aquila Flower is an associate professor of geography at Western Washington University. Dr. Flower is a geographer and ecologist specializing in forest, alpine, and coastal ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. She uses methods drawn from GIS, statistics, ecology, and dendrochronology to explore long-term patterns of environmental change. Aquila has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and considers herself a proud resident of Cascadia and the Salish Sea Bioregion. She teaches geography, GIS, climatology, and biogeography in WWU’s College of the Environment.