Geog 335 GIS: Lab 4 Vector Analysis with ArcGIS

Goal

The ultimate goal for Lab 4 was to use different geoprocessing tools available in ArcGIS to help find suitable habitat for bears located in the study area of Marquette County, Michigan.

Methods

The first step I took to find suitable bear habitat was to find the top three forest types that bears prefer in Marquette County. I did a table join between the landcover and bear locations feature classes to determine the top three forest types that the bears liked the most. Next, I wanted to figure out if streams were essential in a bear habitat. To find out if streams were important to bears I did a query of the bear locations and streams feature classes to see if the bears were located close to streams. I found out that streams are important to a bear habitat because 72 percent of the bears were located within 500 meters of a stream. Now I had the two important criteria for a bear habitat, close proximity to streams and the best forest types for the bears. Next, I found the best areas for bears to live in Marquette County based on the criteria I created. I clipped the streams and the preferred landcover feature classes in order to locate the streams that were located within the preferred landcover area. Then I did a 500 meter buffer on the streams feature class and I made sure to dissolve after the buffer so that any internal boundaries were omitted. Next, I figured out the best areas for bear habitat in the management lands of the Michigan DNR. I found the best areas for bears by clipping the study area and the DNR management feature classes. Then I created a union between the DNR management and preferred land cover feature classes and dissolved to clear away any internal boundaries. The DNR did not want the bear habitat to be within 5 kilometers of urban or built up land. To make sure the bear habitat was away from urban or built up land I created a union between the landcover feature class and the all habitat in the study area feature class. Then I did a query to determine where the urban or built up land was located and created a 5 kilometer buffer for those areas of land.

Results

The Bear Habitat in Marquette County map indicates that the optimal place for bears to live is near the streams and near the evergreen forest, the forested wetlands, and the mixed forest land. The Michigan DNR Land map indicates that there are areas within the DNR Management lands that will be ideal for bears to live.