Puget Sound future scenarios project

Future Scenarios help plan for a changing future that is shifting in known and unknown ways. We do this by generating and then exploring a suite of distinct, plausible futures. Alternative scenarios help reveal what it takes to achieve recovery goals, and the trade-offs and co-benefits of present-day policy choices for future outcomes. Scenarios often spur creative solutions.

Scenarios are both a conceptual approach to decision making and an analysis tool to describe how the socio-ecological system might fare in the future. Scenario planning is a structured process that helps communities plan for an uncertain future by exploring multiple possibilities of what might happen. How might the future unfold and what does that mean for our plans? What happens if we stay on our current trajectory? And what might happen if we change course, by our own volition or by changing external dynamics?

The scenarios work strives to improve the resilience of Puget Sound recovery by doing the following:

1. Strengthening recovery strategies.  Scenarios help us stress test our strategies and ensure they are effective in a changing region.  This exploration can surface creative solutions
2. Communicating implications.  Scenarios enable us to assess and communicate the co-benefits and trade-offs of current and potential policy and management choices.
3. Nurturing the community of practice by bridging social and natural science disciplines.  Scenarios incorporate varied drivers of change, sectors, and types of impact.

Stay Tuned as we share more of our findings here!

How are scenarios made?

The scenarios are iteratively developed and refined with input from the recovery community. The project began by looking at past scenario planning efforts in Puget Sound and, through workshops and conversations and with the support of an Advisory Group, sought input on important drivers related to achieving Puget Sound recovery goals. Four drivers were selected as important and (relatively) uncertain factors to consider:  

• Population growth is the number of people expected to come to the region by 2080 based on Office of Financial Management projections. All scenarios reflect the high end of OFM projections to demonstrate the most likely, and the most stressful, direction. 
• Climate change includes temperature and precipitation forecasts. All scenarios reflect relatively high climate change. This was considered the most likely and the most stressful direction. Holding population growth and climate change constant across the scenarios supports scenario comparisons. 
• Governance reflects whether government actors are aligned and coordinating, the amount of central vs. local control, and the willingness of government to change legacy systems vs take an incremental approach. The trajectory of this driver is used to inform the types of growth and development policies represented in the scenarios, with more aligned and coordinated governance generally supporting more ambitious policies.  
• Human perceptions and behaviors reflect the attitudes and choices of people – where and how people live on the landscape, and whether behaviors support (or do not support) Puget Sound recovery work. Similar to the governance driver, the trajectory of this driver is used to inform the types of growth and development policies represented in the scenarios, and also informs thinking about the potential success of these policies and where in Puget Sound people might choose to live. More positive human perceptions and behaviors generally support more ambitious and successful policies and more central, urban living.

In the previous phase, Phase 2, the project team presented three alternative scenarios – Salmon Forward, Networked Growth, and Rural Stewardship – each constructed to explore how Smart Growth ideas and policies might “play out” in a different growth and development trajectory. The three Phase 2 scenarios were used to spark creative thinking and help Puget Sound recovery partners generate bold ideas for Smart Growth.  

In the current phase, Phase 3, the project team and its advisors examined these bold ideas, plus other bold ideas from multiple Puget Sound recovery plans and sources to identify a subset of ideas that break from the region’s current growth and development approaches. With advice from policy experts, these big ideas were translated into a specific set of policies that were then represented in a new alternative scenario comprised of elements of each of the Phase 2 alternative scenarios. Using one “hybrid” scenario in Phase 3 is intended to facilitate discussion of how big ideas and their related policies could play out, and to illustrate how their impacts and outcomes could interact in different settings.  

As before, the Phase 3 hybrid scenario has two parts: a character-driven narrative, or story, about what life might be like for a variety of Puget Sound residents (including the people introduced in the Phase 2 scenarios), and a set of modeled results to help better understand scenario outcomes

what models do the results come from?

The model results help us visualize the alternative future being explored by testing policies that reflect the bold ideas and illustrating how they might look on the Puget Sound landscape. This allows us to explore possible outcomes of those ideas and understand additional implications that may not be explicitly modeled. 

The results come from three models:

• Envision, a map-based modelling platform, that helps to explore how different population distribution, growth, development, and conservation “rules” or actions could play out on the landscape;  
• A qualitative network model (QNM) of a Puget Sound watershed that identifies and links elements of the recovery system.  QNM speaks to water quality, natural resource economy, and sense of place; and:
• An index-based assessment of salmon favorability based on freshwater habitats.

Contact us

If you would like to be involved in this project work, have data to share, or would like a briefing, please get in touch with one of the project leads:

• Laura Rivas, laura.rivas@psp.wa.gov
• Elizabeth McManus, emcmanus@rossstrategic.com

Last updated: 08/11/25