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| Potential Bear Habitat includes all of the areas suitable for the DNR to set up bear management zones, while Proposed Habitat takes into consideration the proximity to urban areas and eliminates any potential habitat that falls too near to an urban or developed area. Due to this, Proposed Habitat is the final area submitted to the DNR as it helps limit conflict between humans the bears. |
Goal: The goal of this lab was to use
vector analysis skills I have gained in the class tutorials to determine the
best location for bear habitats to be set up my the DNR. I was tasked with
determining which tools would be best used to determine these locations.
Background: I was given some GPS data
regarding recent bear locations, in a study area of Marquette County, MI. I was
told to look into stream proximity and land cover in order to best determine
locations for bear habitats to be set up by the DNR. I also had to keep these
lands inside of the DNR management zones I was given.
Methods: I began by determining what types
of land cover the bears were typically found in basesd on the GPS data I was
given. I did this by joining my bear locations with the land cover feature
class and summarizing to determine the top three land covers the bears were
found in. Most of the bears were found in either mixed forest land, forested
wetlands, or evergreen forest land. I simply exported the mixed forest land,
forested wetlands, and evergreen forest land into its own bearlandcover feature
class.
I then wanted to determine if the bears were typically found
near streams. I did this by simply selecting by location from the bear location
feature class, selecting all the bear location features within 500 meters of a
stream. This ended up selecting 49 of the 60 bear locations (72.05%). This
helped me determine that proximity to a stream is a definite factor in
determining bear habitat.
One last factor in determining where the DNR should set up
bear habitats I determined was taking the DNR management zones into
consideration. The DNR has certain zones where they can set up the management
areas. In order to get these zones ready for analyzing, I simply had to clip
out any of the zones outside of the study area.
Results: Now that all of the analysis has been performed, there is a clear area, as shown by Proposed Habitat Area, on the map in which the DNR can set up bear management areas. This area on the map all falls within 500 meters of a stream, is located in either mixed forest lands, forested wetlands, or evergreen forest land, is within the DNR management zones, and is at least more than 5 kilometers from an urban or built-up area. There are some bear location points on the northwest of the map which are not near any proposed management zones. This is due to the fact that there isn't very many areas of DNR management zones in that region of the county, though otherwise it would make excellent bear territory as it falls within the other categories. Perhaps the DNR can see about expanding management zones into this area to further cover as many bear habitats as possible. The green Potential Bear Habitat includes the Proposed Habitat as it is the habitat determined before taking urban areas into consideration. After the consideration of urban areas, the orange Proposed Habitat was created and determined to be the final proposal area for bear management zones to the DNR.
Sources:
USGS NLCD
Michigan DNR
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