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Pierce County Elementary Schools:

Size and Natural Land Cover

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The Process

  • Impervious surface data was clipped to the Pierce County extent and symbolized with a red to green color ramp, with red symbolizing areas of high impervious surface and green symbolizing areas of low impervious surface.

  • Pierce County elementary schools were extracted from all Pierce County public schools and symbolized by size. Schools were classified as either 'Small', 'Average', or 'Large' based on the acerage they occupy, with the smallest 20% of schools classified as 'Small' and the largest 20% of schools classified as 'Large'. Smaller schools are symbolized with a darker red saturation and larger schools are symbolized with a darker green saturation.

  • This map focuses on elementary schools in the Gig Harbor and Tacoma area.

  • Zonal Statistics was used to analyze of the composition of school grounds and determine the imperviousness of each school ground surface.

  • Elementary school polygons were converted to points using the Feature to Point tool.

  • Thiessen Polygons for each school were created and clipped to the extent of Pierce County. This was done to determine the size of each school's feeder region. Feeder regions are symbolized using a red to green color ramp to show the percentage of impervious surface each region's school has.

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