Geospatial Assessment of Ecological Functions and Flood-Related Risks on Floodplains along Major Rivers in the Puget Sound Basin, Washington

Abstract

Ecological functions and flood-related risks were assessed for floodplains along the 17 major rivers flowing into Puget Sound Basin, Washington. The assessment addresses five ecological functions, five components of flood-related risks at two spatial resolutions—fine and coarse. The fine-resolution assessment compiled spatial attributes of floodplains from existing, publically available sources and integrated the attributes into 10-meter rasters for each function, hazard, or exposure. The raster values generally represent different types of floodplains with regard to each function, hazard, or exposure rather than the degree of function, hazard, or exposure. The coarse-resolution assessment tabulates attributes from the fine-resolution assessment for larger floodplain units, which are floodplains associated with 0.1 to 21-kilometer long segments of major rivers. The coarse-resolution assessment also derives indices that can be used to compare function or risk among different floodplain units and to develop normative (based on observed distributions) standards. The products of the assessment are available online as geospatial datasets (Konrad, 2015; http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F7DR2SJC).

First posted March 23, 2015