To use various geoprocessing tools for vector analysis in ArcGIS to determine suitable habitat for bears in the study area of Marquette County, Michigan.
Objectives:
1. To map a GPS MS Excel file of black bear locations in the study area, central Marquette County, Michigan
2. To determine the forest types where black bears are found in the study area based on GPS locations of black bears.
3. To determine if bears are found near streams.
4. To find suitable bear habitat based on two criteria.
5. To find all areas of suitable bear habitat within areas managed by the Michigan DNR.
6. To eliminate areas near urban or built up lands.
7. Generate a digital data flow model of the workflow and cartographic output
8. Use some python!
Introduction:
The purpose of this lab was to understand how to use the different geoprocessing tools while accomplishing the goals of finding out the best places to create suitable bear habitat on already managed land by the DNR. Then I was to create a map showing the results. I chose to also add in the type of land found in the county to show what type of land would be managed, which can be seen below in the first figure.
Methods:
There were some new methods used in this lab than the previous one that we have learned since then. These include intersect, dissolve, clip, buffer, and erase. These tools have really brought to the table a new way of understand how we can manipulate data to solve more complicated problems. These newly acquired skills on top of the ones previously were used to get to the correct answer for the question, which can be seen in figure 2 showing the flow model.
To start this project I had to learn how to map x-y coordinates from an excel spreadsheet. I then added the coordinates as an "event theme" and exported them as a feature class to my database. Next I had to spatially join the bear locations with the cover data sets to determine which land cover the bears would be found in. The next step was to summarize the dataset to get a count to find out what the top 3 types of land cover types bears preferred.
Using the buffer tool allowed me to be able to create a feature class that showed areas withing 500 meters of streams, and I also used the buffer tool to create a feature class that showed an area of 5 km around urban land that would not make a good place for suitable bear habitat.
Then, using the intersect tool I was able to create a feature class that was using all of the specifications needed before I was able to use the erase tool at the end to get ride of any areas that I did not want to be part of the map.
I then made a map showing the results I found that would answer the DNR's requests of where to manage the land suitable for bears.
The last part of this lab was to use some python script inside Arcmap,which can be seen in the figure below. I found this to be extremely interesting and different way to use the tools that we have been using in the program. I found myself picking up the ability to do the code very quick and even thought that this may be faster than actually going through and doing all of the tools on the program as long as I know all of my tools, what I need to do with each tool, and have it planned out ahead of time. I look forward to using more of the python in future classes after this one ends.
Results:
The results that came through after figuring out how to solve the problem were really quite interesting. The map I made shows the best location for the DNR to manage the land for the bears. It has all of the criteria in the map I created along with showing the forest types it can be found in.
Sources: All of the data were downloaded from the State of Michigan Open GIS Data http://gis.michigan.opendata.arcgis.com/
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