2025 WA GIS Conference

Come learn about the King County Watershed Mapping Toolbox and new countywide wetlands data. In 2023-2024, King County procured a new wetlands dataset derived from high resolution aerial imagery, LiDAR, land cover data, and local hydrology data. This new dataset is far higher resolution than the previous GIS data on wetlands in King County and will support enterprise-wide functions from Water and Land Resources to Permitting. As part of getting this data to those who can benefit from its use, King County Water and Land Resources, in partnership with the King County GIS Center, has built the Watershed Mapping Toolbox. The Toolbox, which is public facing, is built using Experience Builder. It leverages the full potential of ESRI’s low/no-code development platform, with significant use of Arcade scripting in the basemap to produce content rich and well-formatted pop-ups.

The Toolbox allows users to view wetlands, streams, likely wetland functions, beaver locations, ecological stressors, and high priority areas for conservation and restoration. It brings into the platform data from outside King County, such as WDNR Ecological Integrity Assessments, iNaturalist beaver sightings, USGS soil information, USFS riparian corridors, and more. Users can view wetland data from 1990, 1996, 2024, search for their project sites or property, and compare wetlands boundaries to aerial imagery dating back to the 1990s. A new and unique feature overlays historic General Land Office maps onto contemporary basemaps and imagery to compare historical conditions to contemporary land use. The Toolbox allows for importing GIS data, exporting PDFs, and using filtering and other tools to produce analytics. Overall, the Watershed Mapping Toolbox aims to be a platform for showcasing the variety of riparian GIS data available in King County, with the goal of breaking down access barriers to riparian data across the enterprise.