Introduction Pages
Welcome to the Salish Sea Restoration Platform. We are a professional community of practice developing the only peer-to-peer open-source knowledge management platform in the Salish Sea. We provide the opportunity to contribute to and refine a shared body of information, evidence, and knowledge using a shared topical and place-based framework. This platform is user managed and actively evolving. Learn more about our Governance. We are:
- A Map of the Salish Sea Social-Ecological System - using our five Page Types we construct a conceptual map of how Workgroups completing Efforts and leaving behind Products change Places. We describe this work conceptually using Topics.
- An Archive of Last Resort - While some agencies have strong archives, a large volume of reports and analyses are not preserved, and some information is only available in the memories of practitioners. This platform enables us to collect materials that might otherwise be lost, and to organize and make sense of products scattered among existing large archives (including papers from the peer-reviewed scientific literature).
- A Coordinated Classification Strategy - We work actively to develop a system of Categories that integrates with other regional actors such as the Puget Sound Partnership so that we have a common language that lets us aggregate both topical and place-based knowledge, and build our shared map.
- Curation of Knowledge to Accelerate Recovery - this is not a inventory (which would be impossible to assemble) but a collection of resources based on the contributions of our editors. We contribute as professionals who care about the future of the Salish Sea, believe that knowledge management is a critical part of our shared work, and have learned that our existing institutions are ill equipped to do that work. This project was born of necessity, and aims to augment and amplify the work of ecosystem stewards across our bioregion.
We encourage you to become a Knowledge Steward. Become familiar with our Style Guide so you can help keep pages in good order. Please adhere to our Social Contract. Once your are ready to go, please contribute in small and large ways:
- Add Workgroups - if there is an important actor that we have not cataloged, consider adding a new workgroup page and describing their social, human, and economic capital, their purposes and the scope of their work (information often not always presented plainly on promotional webpages).
- Showcase Important Efforts - it is useful to describe whole efforts and how they unroll over time. The piecemeal awards of Puget Sound Ecosystem Funding do not describe the arc of conservation work in a way that helps us learn. Use the wiki to describe the evolution of Landform Scale efforts.
- Archive and Profile Important Products - If you encounter an important piece of public-domain work that might get lost, you can use this platform as an archive, or point to other Stable Public Archives. Interpret products using categories and taking notes.
- Choose a Place To Curate - we can pick a place, and then organize information about workgroups, efforts, and products, and tell The Story of Place. This can help us become more coherent and integrated in our conservation efforts.
- Select or Create a Topic to Curate - Social-ecological work is inherently interdisciplinary. Useful knowledge, information, and evidence is often best organized around the confluence of two to four categories. For example the Salmon Recovery page describes the intersection of Category:Salmon and Category:Restoration. Snohomish Delta describes the confluence of Category:Snohomish and Category:River Delta. Tell the story of the intersection where you work.
Please contact our Moderator on Duty if you have any questions, and if you are passionate about science-based ecosystem stewardship, please consider how you might contribute to the Development and Governance of the platform.
