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.

I am currently serving a one-year internship for the Cultural Resources Division of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. With no permanent GIS staff member in the division, my goal has been to establish data management and best practices for GIS data.

The Cultural Affairs Division monitors agency projects for possible impacts to archeologically significant areas and artifacts. When a project is first proposed, division archeologists determine the likelihood of disturbance to cultural sites and whether surveys have been performed, or a site survey is needed. Much of the data is Category 3 and needs to be handled securely. We work closely with tribal governments and Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. My job is to manage geographic data for these projects.

After coming on board, my first task was to find out where and how the geographic data was being stored. I found that the data was spread out over several folders on servers (in various formats), and as zipped shapefiles attached to project tickets. There was no central, searchable location for the data.

To begin the process of organizing the data, I turned to ArcGIS Online for its versatility. I was able quickly add geodata to create a master map of Cultural Affairs projects accessible to team members.

Now I am taking data management for the division to the next level by creating a geodatabase, with customized fields and domains, to house our data. The database will reside on our SQL server and will be highly searchable.

This position has provided me with a great opportunity to build a GIS operation from the ground up. At times it has challenging, but I have enjoyed the process. My goal is to create a GIS that works for everyone in the division who needs it to do their job