Sediment Quality in Bellingham Bay, 2010

Ecology surveyed Bellingham Bay surface sediments under the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program (PSEMP). Bellingham Bay is part of the Strait of Georgia region, which had been studied previously in a survey conducted jointly by Ecology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1997 (Long et al., 2005) and again in 2006 by Ecology (Partridge et al., 2012a, b) with the same field and laboratory methods. The survey design weights sample results by area, which enables Ecology to estimate the percent of area (spatial extent) with given sediment conditions and to compare results from multiple surveys at a glance. The study design, sampling and analytical methods, and list of parameters are described in Dutch et al. (2009, 2010) and on Ecology’s website. Findings