Olympic Sculpture Park: Year 3 monitoring of shoreline enhancements

Abstract

In January 2007 the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park (OSP) opened at a site along Seattle’s urbanized Elliott Bay shoreline. The park includes enhanced shoreline features designed to benefit juvenile salmon and other organisms. A pocket beach and habitat bench were created in shallow nearshore waters, vegetation was planted in the uplands, and coarse‐grained sediments and driftwood were placed on the beach. These features replaced the relatively unproductive armored seawall and riprap shoreline, with a goal of increasing the number and diversity of fish and invertebrates. Although this shoreline is in an urban, commercial setting and will not be completely restored to pre‐historic conditions, the park has enhanced a publically accessible segment of shoreline that has more natural functions than it did before.