Methods:
I used the Government Land Survey Office (GLO T-sheets) survey maps from 1848 to 1858 overlaid onto a map of Whatcom County and WRIA 1. From these T-sheets I digitized the old channel of the Nooksack River. From there I created a polygon of the old Nooksack River. I used the buffer tool to create several different buffer zones around the main-stem of the Nooksack River that I had digitized. I created a buffer zone of 500’, 1000’, 1500’, 2000’, and 4000’ per side of the river. These buffer zones will be different options for my proposed riparian zone. I then used the intersect tool to establish the intersection between specific Whatcom County land zones and the buffer\riparian zone. This new intersect output layer needed to be dissolved so that my square footage per zone was just one quantity. I then created a new column in the attribute table called acres. The output for this column was created by dividing the square footage of each zone category by a square acre. This established a quantity of total acres per zone. This gave me my final data set: total area in acres, per zone, affected by the re-established riparian zone.
With the acreage per zone the study can estimate the cost of re-establishing the riparian zone from several different perspectives:
· The land could be purchased out right, by Whatcom County or the State of Washington, the Federal Government, or the Indian tribes, or some combination of all of the groups that benefit from the Nooksack Fishery and the ongoing health of the river. The land could then be set apart and included in the natural river ecosystem.
· The land could be donated by the respective owners and for it they would receive a significant offset of their future land taxes for a determined amount of time.
· It could be accomplished through a combination of land purchase and tax offsets.
The study took this output information and placed it in an Excel spreadsheet and using the varied prices of agricultural land it was able to produce some estimated costs for the re-establishment program.
I used the Government Land Survey Office (GLO T-sheets) survey maps from 1848 to 1858 overlaid onto a map of Whatcom County and WRIA 1. From these T-sheets I digitized the old channel of the Nooksack River. From there I created a polygon of the old Nooksack River. I used the buffer tool to create several different buffer zones around the main-stem of the Nooksack River that I had digitized. I created a buffer zone of 500’, 1000’, 1500’, 2000’, and 4000’ per side of the river. These buffer zones will be different options for my proposed riparian zone. I then used the intersect tool to establish the intersection between specific Whatcom County land zones and the buffer\riparian zone. This new intersect output layer needed to be dissolved so that my square footage per zone was just one quantity. I then created a new column in the attribute table called acres. The output for this column was created by dividing the square footage of each zone category by a square acre. This established a quantity of total acres per zone. This gave me my final data set: total area in acres, per zone, affected by the re-established riparian zone.
With the acreage per zone the study can estimate the cost of re-establishing the riparian zone from several different perspectives:
· The land could be purchased out right, by Whatcom County or the State of Washington, the Federal Government, or the Indian tribes, or some combination of all of the groups that benefit from the Nooksack Fishery and the ongoing health of the river. The land could then be set apart and included in the natural river ecosystem.
· The land could be donated by the respective owners and for it they would receive a significant offset of their future land taxes for a determined amount of time.
· It could be accomplished through a combination of land purchase and tax offsets.
The study took this output information and placed it in an Excel spreadsheet and using the varied prices of agricultural land it was able to produce some estimated costs for the re-establishment program.