Lab 3
GOAL: The main goal of this lab is to understand how to utilize processing tools to locate and display certain areas in ArcGIS. In this case, the project is to find a suitable habitat for bears in a Marquette County, Michigan study area.BACKGROUND: The study area for this project is in Marquette County, Michigan. The Michigan DNR are looking for the most suitable area where black bear can live within their managed lands. Using bear location, streams, and distance from urban areas, the DNR can determine where the best suitable habitat is for a bear to live in Marquette County, Michigan.
METHODS:
Objective 1: We were given an excel spreadsheet with bear locations based off of GPS tracking. With the use of an XY event theme I was able to create a feature class with the locations of the bears. With the excel data now in the form of a feature class, I was able to place that information on the map.
Objective 2: We had to determine the type of land-cover black bears prefer. First, I had to join the land-cover data to the bear location data. With a summary, I was able see what the three most likely land-cover types for bears to reside in. They were Evergreen Forest Land, Forested Wetlands, and Mixed Forest Land. Next, I created a separate layer for the three land-cover types.
Objective 3: In order to see how many bears were near streams, I placed a 500 meter buffer around all of the streams in the study area. I then used select by location to find all the bear locations within 500 meters of the stream. The results were surprising yet logical. Approximately 72% of bears in the study area are located within 500 meters of a stream. Biologists claim that anything over 30% is important, so having a stream near a bear habitat is very important.
Objective 4: Suitable land cover types and the buffer of 500 meters from a stream were combined through the Intersect tool (also using the dissolve tool to remove any overlapping boundaries). This left any areas that fit both of the criteria previously stated.
Objective 5: By intersecting all of the DNR managed land with the ideal location criteria (500 meters or closer to a stream and suitable land cover) and performing a dissolve, I selected the newly formed polygons and created another layer.
Objective 6: This was the most difficult task of them all. I had to create a 5 km buffer around all urban or built up land. Lastly, an erase was performed on the buffered area combined with the most recent data for a suitable bear habitat. Finally, after many tools were applied, it left me with the most ideal black bear habitat locations (as seen in Figure 1).
Objective 7: Creating the map was fun! I added a legend, North arrow, scale, and a data frame giving the context of where the study area was within Marquette County.
Objective 8: Working in ArcGIS Python was something I was initially unfamiliar with. It was a great experience making the buffer distance larger just by entering programming information. With more exposure to the programming system, I am sure I would be able to become accustomed to using it.
FIGURES:
Figure 1: This map identifies the most suitable bear habitat locations within the Marquette County, Michigan study area
Figure 2: The data flow model used to create the map above (figure 1)
SOURCES:
- Michigan Geographic Data Library
- 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 http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/mgdl/framework/metadata/Marquette.html
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