Background: We had several objectives in this lab that needed to be accomplished involving a given study area in Marquette County and the habitat of black bears. Some aspects we needed to take into account when determining the suitable habitats were proximity to streams, forest types, and if the habitat is near urban or built up lands.
Methods: The first step of this lab was learning how to map X, Y coordinates from an excel file and apply that knowledge in order to map the locations of the black bears. I then performed a spatial join with the bear locations and the landcover feature classes and used summary statistics to find out how many bears were found in each habitat type. I then used the buffer tool in order to determine how many bears were within 500 meters of streams in the study area. I then used this information to determine that far more than 30% of bears were within 500 meters of streams, which means biologists would consider streams important for suitability criteria. I then used the dissolve and intersect tools to create a more suitable habitat based on land cover types and proximity to streams. I then used intersect and dissolve to show all suitable areas within DNR management areas. I finally used buffer and erase to find all suitable habitats within DNR management areas that are away from urban or built up land.
Results: The results consist of Figure 1. Figure 1 shows all suitable bear habitats, all suitable habitats within DNR management areas away from urban or built up land, and the bear locations. A small locator map shows where the study zone was within Marquette County, Michigan. Figure 2 shows the data flow model used to reach results.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Sources:
Land cover from USGS NLCD: http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/mgdl/nlcd/metadata/nlcdshp.html
DNR Management Units: http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/spatialdatalibrary/metadata/wildlife_mgmt_units.htm
Michigan Center for Geographic Information: http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/mgdl/
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