Lab 4

The purpose of this lab was to work with vector geoprocessing tools to determine suitable habitats for bears in a study area of Marquette County, Michigan. Additionally, I created a visual workflow so that others could replicate my process.

 

The first step was to get a better understating of the data I was going to be working with.  By looking at the files in ArcMap, I saw that I was working with databases, feature classes, and an excel table containing the coordinates of bear locations.  By making this table into a feature class and setting its coordinate system to the same as the other feature classes I should be able to plot them accurately and easily.

Creating a feature class from an excel table.

 

The next step was to start plotting and interpreting the data.  I added the feature classes as well as bear locations to make a simple map that showed me what type of land cover each bear was in when their position was recorded.  By intersecting these two features, I generated a new feature that was a combination of the two, a point showing where the bear was as well as what type of land cover it was in.

From this map, I determined the three most popular cover types for the bears to be mixed forest land, forested wetland, and evergreen forest land.

 

The next task was to find out how many bears were near streams, as biologists hypothesize they will be.  By creating a 500 meter zone around the streams using the buffer tool, and then intersecting that with our bear_cover layer, I determined that 49 of the bears were within 500 meters of a stream, the majority of our 67 bears in the area.

 

The next task was to find the most suitable habitat for bears based on our data thus far.  By intersecting the 500 meter stream buffer with a layer created from the three most popular habitats, I got my results.  Only areas that were within the popular habitat as well as within 500 meters of a stream appeared on the map. By running a dissolve on this final layer, I took care of the overlapping boundaries, giving a much cleaner final look.

 

The next step was to figure out which parts of the potential habitat was on DNR management lands.  By intersecting our potential habitat layer with the DNR management lands layer, we get our result.

 

 

 

The DNR likes my results but wants its management land to be 5km away from any urban or built up land. By creating a 5km buffer around these land use types and then using the erase tool to remove where this buffer intersects DNR land we get our final results.

I then created the final map in ArcMap.

 

Finally, I created a workflow diagraming the steps I took in making my map so my work could be replicated by someone else.