Welcome to the 2026 GIS in Action Annual Conference hosted by the Oregon & SW Washington Chapter of the Geospatial Professional Network & Cascadia ASPRS.
This presentation shares the benefits of applying recycled water to a degraded urban wetland, using remote sensing and spatial analysis to document and quantify the impacts of recycled water upon vegetation health, soil biome, and site ecology.
As Washington County densifies, the volume of wastewater effluent that can be released into the Tualatin River each day remains limited by the stream ecology of the Tualatin. CWS has partnered with Oregon DEQ to define a new beneficial use of recycled water to restore jurisdictional wetlands that have been degraded by decades of agricultural use.
This presentation showcases how geospatial data and analysis can advance the use of recycled water for wetland restoration in Washington County and beyond. Using Thomas Dairy as a case study, we use UAS data collected at the site since 2019 to monitor vegetation health before, during, and after reuse application. Field measurements using advanced sensors (TEROS and ATMOS devices) are used to: 1.) Monitor the fate of land-applied recycled water, ensuring compliance with rules and regulations around recycled water use; and 2.) Quantify and confirm the agronomic rate of the native plant community. We also compare UAS data to satellite imagery (Sentinal-2 sensor) to analyze relationships between GNDVI and NMDI indices at different scales. We hope that this analysis will encourage other wastewater treatment agencies to invest in reuse programs that restore degraded wetlands across the state.
