GIS I: Lab 3 Suitable Bear Habitat

GIS I: Lab 3 Suitable Areas for Bear Habitat

o Sources: Include the sources of the data. You could even provide a link to the Michigan Center for Geographic Information.

Goal

The goal of this lab was to become familiar with various spatial vector tools as well as non-spatial tools and apply them to finding suitable bear habitat within a study area in Marquette county in Michigan.

Background

We were given a scenario to find the most suitable areas for bear habitat in this particular study area in Marquette county. These areas suitable enough to be set aside for bears had to be within suitable land cover types (Mixed Forest Land, Forested Wetlands and Evergreen Forest Land), 500 meters of a stream, within DNR management lands, and 5 kilometers away from Urban or Built up lands. We then used various tools such as intersect, buffer, erase etc. to complete the scenario and find our answer of suitable areas for bears that met the criteria. 

Methods

To create this map I used many spatial vector tools such as intersect, buffer, erase and dissolve. Intersect allows the data to be combined and produce an output layer with features that have attribute data from both layers. Buffer can create a layer that is less than or equal to a specified distance from one or more features. This tool came in handy when I had to find suitable land for bears that was within 500 meters of a stream and when finding land that was 5 kilometers away from Urban or Built up lands (after also using the erase tool). The erase tool is a type of extraction, it is similar to a buffer but extracts that data like a cookie cutter. And lastly the dissolve tool removes any interior boundaries based on a shared attribute. Below is an image of the data flow model I used for each objective of this lab, and below that is a picture of the python codes I used for objective 8. 

Figure 1: Data Flow Model used to complete this lab

Figure 2: Python coding to complete objective 8

Results

Below is the map I created of the Suitable areas for bears. It shows, in pink, the areas that are suitable for bears and meet the following criteria, areas near 500 meters of a stream, areas that fall within their top 3 habitats and areas 5 kilometers away from any urban development. In light purple shows areas that meet the criteria except that they are within 5 kilometers of urban development. It is clear that the norther third of this study area has land that can be set aside for bears.

Sources

All Data Downloaded from the State of Michigan Open GIS Data http://gis.michigan.opendata.arcgis.com/

Landcover is from USGS NLCD 

• http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/mgdl/nlcd/metadata/nlcdshp.html

DNR management units

• http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/spatialdatalibrary/metadata/wildlife_mgmt_units.htm

Streams from

• http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/mgdl/framework/metadata/Marquette.html