Habitat Suitability Analysis

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by James Collins2 views·Updated Mar 19, 2021
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  1. Hi, everybody.
  2. My name is James Collins, and with Vandal A industries,
  3. I'd like to welcome you to my presentation on potential
  4. sage grouse Select habitats.
  5. I'd like to personally thank Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
  6. director Hank Gorsuch for the opportunity to present here today.
  7. We are experts.
  8. That's why you should choose vandal.
  9. And I think that our work here, they will show
  10. you that.
  11. So our strategy is relatively simple.
  12. Discover existing data with the Montana GIS Clearinghouse and the
  13. Montana State Library.
  14. We will give you a concise limit of potential area
  15. that is suitable for grouse breeding for Lex.
  16. We'll do this by downloading light our data, which will
  17. include a digital elevation model.
  18. And from that we can determine the percent slope.
  19. We will also find a land cover raster layer, which
  20. is, I think, done every three years.
  21. So last one would have been made in 2017, but
  22. it'll get us pretty pretty close.
  23. And then we want to take that area and use
  24. a tool called the expand tool, which we'll get into
  25. in a minute to determine all cells within 500 m
  26. of escape.
  27. Cover our escape cover here will be big sage brush
  28. step. Then we're that what we're gonna do is select
  29. for study areas within the study area.
  30. Sorry, I got lost in my notes there for overlapping
  31. areas of preferred slope and the habitat requirements being within
  32. 500 m of escape cover.
  33. And then we'll compare our analysis with an existing, like
  34. placement, uh, table that I've made from just lex that
  35. I found.
  36. Some of them may have been sage, grouse, leks.
  37. Some of them may have been sharp telex, but they
  38. are closely related.
  39. And frankly, we're going for the purpose of this project.
  40. We're going to call them all stage, ground flex.
  41. Mm. Our final analysis will help throughout stage graphs country
  42. by limiting the area required to search and find Lex.
  43. And I think that that will be pretty cool.
  44. So again, our strategy is simple.
  45. Once we have the data digital elevation model to create
  46. slope are determined slope, expand land cover using the expand
  47. tool that I was talking about, um, creating a 500
  48. metre buffer little spoiler alert.
  49. Um, that there is no country within our study area.
  50. That's 500 m from, um, from a scape cover, so
  51. that's not ideal.
  52. But it would work in a larger a larger study
  53. area. I just made it relatively small for the purpose
  54. of getting things done.
  55. Um, then we're going to take a look at these
  56. observed Lex, which are going to be the black and
  57. red dots.
  58. As you can see, the yellow here is actually going
  59. to be a transparency over laid on the slope, uh,
  60. percent slope raster.
  61. And that's the escape covers the yellow.
  62. That's that sage brush step I was talking about.
  63. And yeah, our competitive advantages is our experience, our top
  64. notch data analysts.
  65. The fact that we will not charge you overhead because
  66. this is our first contract with you.
  67. And frankly, I really need a job.
  68. So we're moving on.
  69. Have a look at that map again.
  70. You can see the yellow is the escape cover the
  71. black and red dots of the known lek sites and
  72. the percent slope raster is underneath.
  73. So here are our land cover raster and our hill
  74. shade effect that we also created from that kind of
  75. gives you a little bit better idea of what Actually
  76. the property looks like, so here on the land cover.
  77. Um, the purple is going to be a mixed grass
  78. prairie, and as you can see, the purple and the
  79. green kind of dominate the scene up there south of
  80. Glasgow, which is going to be mixed grass, prairie and
  81. big sagebrush steppe in this area.
  82. So those are prime sage grouse habitat basically have a
  83. look at that.
  84. There's again the known like sites as you can see
  85. there, there, right in where they need to be, Which
  86. is pretty interesting.
  87. Our acknowledgements here today.
  88. I'd like to thank Penn State University for making this
  89. analysis possible as well as reincorporated.
  90. And all of the mapping data used here today is
  91. the property of the state of Montana.
  92. But it is curated in the Montana GIs clearinghouse, and
  93. I even had time to make this logo