M1 S4 - Suitability Analysis / Least Cost Path

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Scenario 4 lets you pretend to be a park ranger in the Coronado National Forest and is assigned to create a corridor between two protected areas for black bear movement. This will help us keep the area protected on different factors especially urbanization keeping away people and noise away from our black bears yet giving them the best suitable area to live. Below is the ArcGIS model I created for the said scenario.



We are given 3 factors to consider (1) roads, (2) elevation and (3) land cover. I realized that besides these if we have data of rivers, and if lucky GPS tracks of black bears (if that's even possible) so we can get a glimpse of their movement as well. First, I applied Euclidean distance tool with the roads layer to transition it to raster and then reclassified all of them according to the suitability criteria given. The reclassified layer were then combined using Weighted overlay tool with the following weights: land cover (60%), elevation (20%) and roads (20%). 

Moreover, I had to create a cost surface which is the inverted habitat suitability model by using the Raster Calculator. Then I used the Cost Distance tool to both natural forest areas (1 and 2) and then using the cost surface as my cost raster. Lastly, both results of the cost distance were then added to the Corridor tool which produced the best suitable (in green) black bear corridor area.


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