Sound IQ Data System
Island County Sound IQ is our pilot project to collect, map and present our nearshore data online, using an easy-to-access, Internet-based platform. To visit the site, simply click on this link: http://www.iqmap.org/icSoundIQ.
In 2011 we entered into an agreement with the City of Bellingham to adapt their land-based City IQ data software system into a new, marine-based, data presentation system to be called Sound IQ. We believe this is the breakthrough 
we have long sought in finding a home for our growing body of data about Island County's shores and marine waters that previously resided in many separate, isolated locations, largely unknown to the public, scientists and planners at all levels to which it might be helpful in making decisions.
For building the Sound IQ website we thank Suzanne Shull of the Northwest Straits Commission and Ann Stark of the City of Bellingham. They did the hard work of transforming it from concept into reality. Shull incorporated our data onto the base maps of Sound IQ. Stark uploaded it all onto the City of Bellingham's server. In the photograph at left, MRC member Linda Rhodes demonstrates the Beach Watchers intertidal monitoring website and the MRC's Sound IQ to visitors at Sound Waters University.
Much assistance was provided by the Island County Shoreline Master Plan update effort and by our county's Planning, Public Works and Health deparments. All shared their data and maps with us.
Sound IQ will present nearshore data in map services, or "composite" maps, that combine multiple data layers. The system will enable us to overlay and correlate such information as forage fish spawning beaches, eelgrass beds and shoreline hardening features, among many other datasets.
This pilot project is just the first step. We hope and anticipate in the future to improve the interactivity of our online maps and to include additional data that was beyond the limits of our initial budget.