Lab 5: Vector Processing

Background and Goal

The goal of this lab was to solve geospatial questions using a variety of different geoprocessing tools and Python Scripting.

Methods

To begin the lab I was given the task of finding suitable bear habitat in Marquette County, Michigan. To begin I brought in the land use, bear locations, and streams. The bear locations did not display the locations of the bears, to do display their location on the map I assigned the layer's table X and Y values that gave the location of the bears. After the location of the bears had been established, I intersected the bear locations layer and the land use layers. Once the two were intersected I summarized the table by land use type and the number of bears located within each. Once I found the top three land use areas for the number of bears found within, I selected those top three land use types and created a new layer. Another requirement for bear habitat was to be located within 500 meters of a stream, so I created a 500 meter buffer around the streams layer and intersected it with the newly created land use layer that contained only the top 3 bear habitat areas, giving me a new layer. Another requirement for the bear habitat was that it needed to be with DNR controlled areas. I brought in the DNR lands layer and intersected with the layer I had just created giving a new layer that contained lands that were within 500 meters of a stream, were the top 3 land use areas for the location of bears, and the qualifying DNR lands. The last requirement for the bear habitat was that it needed to be 5 kilometers from urban areas. To do this, I opened the attribute table of the original land use layer and selected urban areas and created a new urban land use layer. I then buffered this layer and erased it from the layer that contained the previous parameters giving me a final layer that showed the DNR managed lands that were in the top 3 bear habitats, at least 5 kilometers from urban development and located within 500 meters of streams. I then used that layer to create the map below.

Data Flow Model for the map created below

Bear Habitat Map created from the steps discussed above

The next section of the lab involved writing python script to complete geoprocessing functions. The first task was to find lakes that would be suitable for the establishment of lakeside resorts. I wrote scripts that would place a 10 mile buffer around the major cities in Wisconsin. I than ran another script that gave me all of the lakes found within this 10 mile buffer.

Python Script used to create a 10 mile buffer around major cities in Wisconsin

Map showing lakes that qualify as potential locations for lakeside resorts

After creating a map that displayed air pollution hazard zones along interstates. I wrote script that created a buffer around the interstates at 1,2,3,4,5,6 mile intervals. Once the buffer was created I categorized the buffer zones from high to low risk by proximity to the interstate.

 Python Script used to create the buffer around the Interstates

Air Pollution Hazard Map for the State of Wisconsin

Sources

Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Esri.

Price, Maribeth. 2016.  Mastering ArcGIS. 7th Edition data. McGraw Hill

Wilson, Cyril 2012, A comprehensive Lake features for Wisconsin, Unpublished data.