Geography 335 GIS: GIS 1 Lab 4: Vector Analysis with ArcGIS

The goal of this lab was to be able to take what a company is asking for, in this case the DNR, and through multiple steps narrow down the area that they are looking for from many features and data sets. This lab was all about the DNR looking for a suitable area for bears to live in. The study area is part of Marquette County in Michigan. The following steps were taken to find this very specific area.

1. I took a MS Excel file with GPS points of bears in this area and I had to turn it into a feature that I could then display on a map.

2. I then used that data about the bears and placed it over a map of all the land cover types in the study area. I took note of the land cover types where the bears were which gives you the ideal land cover for the bears to live in.

3. Another thing I looked at is where the bears are in terms of the streams in my study area. Bears need the streams for food and water so streams are important to have in the final suitable habitat for the bears.

4. I used the two above criteria to narrow down the suitable area even further. I selected all the ideal land cover types I found above and preformed a buffer on the streams or found all land within 500 meters a stream. Then I did an intersect or found the places that were within 500m of a stream and in one of the ideal land cover types.

5. The DNR wants to make sure that the habitat they pick is also Part of the land that they manage. So I added the areas managed by the DNR and intersected or joined those areas with the area I found in step 4. This gave me the areas within 500m of streams, in ideal land cover, and in the DNR managed land.

6. The DNR does not want the bears too close to cities and communities so they requested that the habitat is not within 5 kilometers of an urban area. I inserted the urban land to the map and then set a buffer of 5 kilometers around those areas. Then I did an erase or deleted the areas within that 5 kilometers. Once I did that I had within 500m of streams, in ideal land cover, in DNR managed land, and now not within 5 kilometers of an urban area. This area is the suitable bear habitat that the DNR has asked you to find.

The middle map below is showing the study area and the suitable habitat for the bears. The last map is the types of land cover in the study area. As you can see there are many so finding the ideal land cover for the bears is important. The top map is just showing where Marquette County is and where the study area is that I was working with.

I found this very interesting. It was cool to be able to start with a request that sounds pretty overwhelming and challenging and be able to find what it is looking for and then display it in a way that is very easy to understand.