GIS in Action 2025

The Emerald Ash Borer is an invasive pest first detected in the United States in 2002. Since then, the Emerald Ash Borer has spread, killing over 100 million ash trees in the eastern U.S. alone and causing over $2 billion in damages. EAB was first detected in Forest Grove, Oregon in 2022 and is has now been detected in Marion, Yamhill, and Clackamas counties.

With EAB spreading in Oregon, the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) Forest Health group wanted our GIS team to build an interactive map to give members of the public a place to view and interact with Emerald Ash Borer data in Oregon. The map needed to combine data from multiple agencies, allow users to turn reference layers on and off, change basemaps, and have a quick way to display information about layers on the map, all in a publicly accessible location.

To meet these goals, we used ArcGIS Experience Builder to create an interactive web application. This application utilizes a web map with all the layers we needed as feature services, with custom pop-ups to show information that was requested and obscure fields that aren’t needed. This application also allows users to turn layers on and off, change basemaps, provides links to more information, and more. This presentation will show an “under the hood” look at the Experience and webmap, focusing on the settings and widgets we used to build the Experience and how the pop-ups were built using a combination of HTML and Arcade scripting.