The goal of this lab is to perform a vector analysis in ArcGIS using certain geoprocessing tools to identify a fitting habitat for bears in the location of Marquette County in Michigan.
Background:
The purpose of this mapping exercise is to locate a suitable habitat location for bears in Marquette County, Michigan. I determined what forest types bears were found in and if they prefer to be located near streams. I then determined where suitable bear habitat locations were in DNR management lands. I also found the DNR bear habitat lands that were 5 kilometers away from urban or built-up lands.
Methods:
Task 1
I first needed to determine what type of data I was working with. I opened ArcCatalog and explored the data for this lab. I had to determine what type of files I was working with and what coordinate systems were being used. I determined that my main source of data, bear_locations_geog$, was an excel file and used map X Y coordinates. I next opened are map and added this data to the viewer. I did this by selecting the File heading from the main interface and choosing Add Data: Add XY Data. I selected to import the file bear_locations_geog$. I set the X Field to POINT_X and the Y Field to POINT_Y. I left the Z field displaying <None>. I selected the coordinate system to be NAD 1983 HARM Michigan GeoRef (Meters) and imported the file. Once the file had loaded and the points were mapped in the ArcMap viewer I exported them and added them to the lab's geodatabase (Marquette_bear_study.gdb) as feature class.
Task 2
In the ArcMap viewer I added all of the other feature classes within the bear_management_area feature dataset to the data frame, bear_management_area feature class and the Political_boundaries feature class. I arranged the layers in an order optimal for viewing and symbolized the landcover layer to have unique values based on the "minor type" field. I performed a Spatial Join with Bear Locations and Landcover. I summarized the Minor Type field in my new feature class's attribute table to find how many bears were found in each habitat. The top 3 habitat types were Mixed Forest Land, Forested Wetlands, and Evergreen Forest Land.
Task 3
I wanted to find if rivers had an influence on bear locations. I performed a 500 meter buffer of the rivers feature class and performed an intersect between the outputted buffer and bear locations to determine how many bears were located within 500 meters of a river. After performing a summarize of the ID field of the outputted feature class, I determined that 49 of the 68 bear locations were located within 500 meters of a stream. That is equivalent to 72% of bear locations are within 500 meters of a stream making it a suitable criteria for bear habitat locations.
Task 4
I extracted my suitable landcover types for a bear habitat as a new feature class and intersected them with the stream buffer to find suitable areas for bear habitat. I removed the internal boundaries in my new feature class by performing the Dissolve tool.
Task 5
I needed to determine the locations of bear habitat on the Michigan DNR management lands. To do this I first clipped the DNR management lands feature class to the study area. I then used the overlay tool Intersect to determine the locations where the bear habitat and the DNR management lands were both present in the study area. I performed the dissolve tool on the output feature class to remove internal boundaries.
Task 6
I now needed to exclude DNR management lands with bear cover that are within 5 kilometers from Urban or Built up lands. To do this I extracted the Urban or Built up lands as a new feature class from the Landcover feature class by Selecting by Attributes MAJOR_TYPE='Urban or Built-Up Land'. I performed a buffer of the Urban or Built up land areas of 5 kilometers. I performed an erase between the buffer of Urban or Built up land cover and the DNR land bear habitat area. My output was bear habitat landcover that is within DNR management lands and is not within 5 kilometers of Urban or Built up lands.
Task 7
I created a map highlighting my results of Tasks 1 through 6. I also created a data flow model of my work flow. Images of both can be found in the Figures section below, Figure 1 and Figure 2.
Task 8
This task's purpose was to practice the use of ArcGIS Python with some basic information. I wrote python commands for a buffer analysis, an interest analysis, and an erase analysis. A screen shot of my python code can be found in the Figures section below as Figure 3.
Results:
The results that appear on the map show that bears tend to be located near streams. The bear population also tends to lie outside of the DNR bear habitat lands. The bears also tend to lie more inland in the Michigan peninsula.
Figures:
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
"Michigan GIS Open Data." GIS Open Data State of Michigan. MI.gov, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
"Michigan 1992 NLCD Shapefile by County." Michigan 1992 NLCD Shapefile by County. N.p., 06 Nov. 2002. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
"Wildlife_mgmt_units." Wildlife_mgmt_units. N.p., 19 Dec. 2001. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
"Michigan Geographic Framework: Marquette County." Michigan Geographic Framework: Marquette County. N.p., 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
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