The National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) wetlands layer for Virginia (obtained from https://www.fws.gov/node/264847 on April 27, 2023) was clipped to a 200 foot buffer around Essex County, Virginia. Then, a 100 foot buffer was created around those wetlands within 200 feet of Essex County. Then, that 100 foot buffer around the wetlands was clipped to the boundaries of Essex County.

Because the NWI water line for the Rappahannock River was set back from the land, according to visual inspection of the imagery, the Mean High Water (MHW) for 2020 was obtained from the Virginia Coastal Resilience Master Plan, Open Data Portal (https://crmp-vdcr.hub.arcgis.com/content/2245e46c13c54b089786cef25ea14263/about). The data file covered the entire Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay tributary system, so the data was clipped to the 200 foot buffer around Essex County. Then, a 100 foot buffer from the MHW line was created, and then merged with the wetlands buffer.

The resulting combined buffer was then clipped to a 200 foot buffer of the Census cartographic boundary of Essex County, so that the whole Rappahannock would not be marked as an RPA.

This is the Resource Protection Area, following the guidance from https://law.lis.virginia.gov/admincode/title9/agency25/chapter830/section80/.