Can Digital Tools Help Manage the World's Watersheds?

Watershed management is a political hot potato virtually everywhere. The Pacific Northwest, for example, is under court-ordered mandate to protect and re-introduce salmon into watersheds stressed by sprawling subdivisions, logging, and dams. 

New software tools being developed by the University of Washington and Battelle Pacific NW National Laboratories can let community and tribal leaders as well as policymakers "see" the whole Puget Sound watershed, analyze human impacts, and explore alternatives. The software simplifies results from sophisticated models of rainfall, water runoff, and estuarine conditions and displays these virtual watersheds over the Internet. Faced with the complexity of an entire watershed, the normal human response is political paralysis, so there seems little question that better tools are needed. If commercial versions of today's limited prototypes became available, their providers might find a ready market for the software as well as for the e-services to deploy and support such tools. More than 1,000 major watersheds throughout the world face challenges similar to Puget Sound. So if Seattle's software mavens are again to dine on Duwamish River salmon, their professional talents may be needed both in their own backyards and around the globe.