How Were the FUTURE Scenarios Developed?

The Future Scenarios project used an iterative and collaborative process that combined expert input, recovery community engagement, and technical modeling. We worked closely with interdisciplinary advisors and members of the region’s recovery community to define the alternative scenarios and model what each might look like on the landscape.

Collaboration with Regional Experts

The Project Team worked with the Puget Sound recovery community to identify focal questions and theories about how stressors that influence both the ecosystem and human wellbeing—climate change and population growth—could change over time.

An Advisory Group served as an overall sounding board for the project during Phases 1 and 2 and identified the project’s drivers of change and initial metrics and data sources. The Advisory Group included representatives from:

  • The Puget Sound Partnership (PSP) Leadership Council
  • PSP Ecosystem Coordination Board
  • PSP Science Panel
  • The Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Council
  • The Partnership Tribal Co-Management Conference
  • The Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program
  • Local governments
  • The Puget Sound Institute

Together, this group created alternative scenarios around four drivers of change:

  • Climate change
  • Population growth
  • Government Coordination
  • Public perception and behavior

The first two drivers (climate change and population growth) were held constant and the other two (government coordination and public perception and behavior) varied between scenarios to create different growth and development patterns and explore different approaches to growth management.

The group also decided to focus all the alternative scenarios on how Puget Sound recovery goals might be achieved in each different future. In that way, the scenarios are created specifically to explore what it might look like to achieve Puget Sound recovery goals under different growth and development patterns.

Over the years the Project Team has also collaborated with other groups beyond the Advisory Group, including Strategic Initiative Leads, state agencies, and more.

Development of Scenario Hallmarks and then Narratives

Using the drivers and metrics identified by the Advisory Group, the Project Team created a set of hallmarks for each scenario. The hallmarks described:

  • The type of growth and development patterns being explored.
  • How conservation and restoration would occur.
  • What types of recovery strategies would be represented.

The hallmarks served as an outline for scenario development. From there, the Project Team created the scenario narratives.

A scenario’s narrative is the conceptual basis of each scenario  and helps people to imagine what life in Puget Sound could look like in 2080. A central character in each narrative is invested in Puget Sound recovery for different reasons, so the narratives allow us to see how progress could be made in different ways and from different perspectives.

The scenario hallmarks are also used to create unique instructions for the Future Scenario’s modeling suite. The models generate quantitative and qualitative outputs to help show what each scenario might “look like” across the landscape.

Future Scenarios Modeling Tools

Over the years, Future Scenarios has established a suite of modeling tools to help the project explore potential biophysical and human wellbeing outcomes in each scenario. Some models produce quantitative outcomes, such as the number of acres of farmland conserved in a scenario. Others generate qualitative outcomes, where the project models do not produce quantitative results, such as how toxics might change under different conditions.
Modeled results are included in the alternative scenario narratives.

Envision

Envision is the project’s primary spatial modeling platform and other models rely on its initial outputs. It integrates multiple models and datasets to illustrate land use, population growth, and conservation and restoration outcomes to show how a place might change over time.

Each scenario has its own set of Envision instructions based on how people might make land-management decisions. Examples include whether or not to live in urban or rural areas or whether upzoning certain areas will increase density in the specific growth and development trajectory being explored.

Qualitative Network Model (QNM)

A QNM represents parts of the social-ecological system that are not modeled through Envision. The QNM helps show how aspects of the system, such as juvenile salmonids or human health, could respond to changes within each scenario.

Salmon Favorability Index

A salmon favorability index uses Envision and QNM outputs related to important salmon habitat, such as miles of streams open to spawning, to evaluate how supportive future habitat conditions may be for salmon populations by 2080.

Housing Affordability Tool

A housing affordability tool determines how housing affordability might change in each scenario. The tool uses land cover and population information from Envision to form the basis of home value predictions associated with factors such as conserved open space and density.

Additional Sub-Models

Several other sub-models help explore socioeconomic activities and conditions beyond the QNM outputs:

  • Environmental Justice: How vulnerable populations experience predicted changes compared to the general population. 
  • Agriculture and Forestry (such as working lands): How economic activity in the agricultural and forestry sectors is affected by predicted changes in land use and land cover.
  • Recreation and Tourism: How predicted changes influence the favorability of conditions to recreation and tourism in the region.
  • Restoration Economy: Regional economic activity (such as economic output and job opportunities) created by investments in restoration activities.

 

Current as of: 07/17/26

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