GIS5100 Module 6, Part 2: Suitability & Least-Cost Analysis

     For this portion of the last lab in Applications in GIS, we were tasked with determining potential corridors for black bears between two protected areas within the Coronado National Forest, Arizona.

Analysis

I used the Reclassify tool on the “elevation” raster to indicate the suitability (“New” column) between elevation range:

I similarly used the Reclassify tool on the “landcover” raster to indicate the suitability rating (“New” column) of landcover values:

I then used the Euclidean Distance tool on the “roads” layer, then used the Reclassify tool to apply distance values.

I used the Weighted Overlay tool to combine the output reclassed rasters for land, elevation, and road distance.

I used the Raster Calculator tool on my weighted overlay raster with the below expression: (("S4WeightOverlay" - 10) * -1) + 1

I then used the Cost Distance tool on the “Coronado1” polygon layer and separately on the “Coronado2” polygon layer – these would both be “sources” that allowed me to plug both outputs into the Corridor tool to create a corridor from my cost distance rasters. I determined the minimum value of the corridor raster, which allowed me to have a jumping off point in order to parse cell pixel values to what might be a more concise corridor.


My resulting map above shows three potential corridors that black bears in the Coronado Nation Forest in Arizona might use. We only considered elevation, land cover, and distance to roads for this analysis, but other factors to consider may be distance to water sources and human disturbance (housing developments, etc.).

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