Lab 3 Report

Geography 335 Lab 3 Report

Ian Godin

Objective: The objective of this lab was to use various geoprocessing tools to determine the locations of suitable bear habitat within a study area in Marquette County Michigan. Using data that showed the locations of the bears within the study area, geoprocessing tools were used to narrow down the preferred habitat of the bears and locate bear habitat that is in DNR management areas.

The first objective for this map was to determine what would make suitable bear habitat. Using the locations of bears and a shape file of land cover types, an intersect was performed to show which type of land cover the bears preferred. These include mixed forest land, forested wetlands and evergreen forest land. These layers were selected in a query and a separate layer was made from the selection Based on information that bears prefer to live in habitats within 500 meters of a stream or river, a buffer was performed on the streams feature class. This buffer result was then intersected with the land cover selection to further narrow down bear habitats.

                The second part of the assignment asked to locate suitable bear habitat that was within a DNR management zone and at least five kilometers from urban or built up land. First, an intersect was performed using shape files that contained the boundaries of the study area and of DNR managed lands. The result was a map of DNR managed lands within the study area. This result was intersected again with the previously made feature class showing the best bear habitats to create a map showing the best bear habitats within DNR managed areas. In order to determine which habitats were at least 5 km away from urban and built up areas, an attribute query was performed on the land cover feature class to select urban land. A buffer was then performed on this selection. Finally, an erase was performed on the buffer to remove these areas from the map. The final map is shown below.

   

          

Also shown is a data flow model to outline the steps I took to create this map.

               

  This lab also introduced us to Python coding. Using simple code, I performed a buffer analysis of the streams feature class. The code is shown below.

  Overall I enjoyed this lab due to the way it allowed us to us G.I.S in a real world scenario. While the workbook teaches how to use the different components of G.I.S, this lab had us perform tasks that one would actually perform in a workplace setting.