Lab 4 GIS 335

Goal

The goal of this lab was to map suitable habitats of bears in Marquette County, MI using a variety of tools in ArcMap.

Background

In this scenario, the DNR wanted to figure out suitable habitats and management areas for bears. Data was downloaded from the Michigan Center for Geographic Information: Landcover, DNR managment units, and streams.

Methods

I started by adding the Marquette bear study from a non-spatial database using X, Y coordinates. File->add data > add x,y data. Once they were mapped I exported the data into a feature class and named it bear_locations. I then added all other shapefiles i would need including streams and landcover. I performed a spatial join between bear locations and landcover, with bear being the destination and landcover being the source. I named this new feature class bear_cover. Next, I figured out how many bear locations were within 500m of streams. I used select by location with streams and bear_locations within 500km. Over 70% of the bear locations were within 500km of streams which is significant. Bears live near streams for necessity like the food and water they can get, this means 500m within streams is suitable. To find complete land suitability for bears, I added a 500m buffer to streams.  I then used intersect between the buffered streams and a exported shapefile of the top 3 landcover types for bear locations and performed an intersect on the areas. After that, I dissolved the results to remove internal boundaries. This gave me Suitable_habitats. I used the clip tool to cut out the DNR management areas outside of the study_area. I took the DNR mangement boundaries and did another intersect on suitable_habitats and the clipped DNR_mgmt to find the suitable habitats that the DNR can manage in its jurisdiction. 

The DNR in this scenario liked the results, but wanted more. They wanted to look at management areas 5 km away from urban and built up areas. I went back to my data and selected by attribute all urban and built up areas and exported to its own shapefile. I applied a 5 km buffer on this area and dissolved the internal boundaries. I used the erase tool to delete the urban and built up areas with a 5 km buffer from the DNR managable habits I had found earlier. This gave me the final areas the DNR wants to look at. 

Results

Suitable habitat are areas where the top 3 landcover and 500m proximity to streams intersect. The bear managment areas are where suitable habitats and DNR management areas intersect that are 5 km away from urban and built up areas. What I have found potentially problematic is that almost no bears are located in the management areas. They are in suitable habitats, but bears for what ever have not chosen those specific habitats to live in. This will make studying these areas difficult because there are almost no bears to study. Perhaps expanding the study area to all of Marquette County the DNR would be able to cover more management areas that have bears to study.

Figures

Sources

Data was downloaded from the Michigan Center for Geographic Information: Landcover, DNR managment units, and streams.