The regional issue of habitat protection

As greater demands are placed upon the natural resources of Puget Sound many alternatives for the protection of those resources must be evaluated. The PRISM project in coordination with Professor Ray Hilborn and collaborators at NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, began work in this area of research with the development of the SHIRAZ modeling framework. SHIRAZ is a framework for integrated analysis of habitat, hatchery, and harvest impacts on salmon. The origins of the model date back to the early 1980's when graduate students at the University of Washington led by Ray Hilborn, Professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, in coordination with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, developed a conceptual model of impacts to habitat and the subsequent affects on salmon population. The model is basically a guided worksheet used to organize the existing knowledge related to the capacity and productivity of streams and their impacts on salmon survival.