Boundaries Project

The Boundaries Project is a GIS project to identify the location and length of all publicly accessible marine shoreline in the state of Washington. Currently, it is unknown how much of Washington’s approximately 3000 miles of shoreline is public and how much is accessible. This information is scattered amongst various government agencies and varies in quality.

The Boundaries Project, scheduled to be completed in 2009, will answer many of these questions about ownership and public accessibility. The data will also combine information from the ShoreZone classification project (Nearshore Habitat Group, WADNR, 1994-2000) ShoreZone , a geospatial dataset summarizing the physical and biological characteristics of the shoreline. With this data combination, we can answer big picture spatial questions about the distribution of biological communities, geological features, and anthropogenic development amongst public shoreline in Washington.

There are many potential uses for this dataset, ranging from identifying potential restoration sites, to mapping spill response routes. How many miles of publicly accessible shoreline are in each County? How many miles of public shoreline have aquatic vegetation? How many miles of public shoreline are armored? These questions and more can be answered using the Boundaries dataset.