Brian G. Buchanan
GEOG 483
Final Project: Identifying Priority Conservation Areas in Centre County, PA
March 18, 2008
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 was established to protect animals that were in jeopardy of extinction within the United States (King 2008). One of the largest problems with the act is that it is reactive to endangered species problems; the species are paid attention to only when they are close to being extinct (King 2008). Centre County, Pennsylvania wanted to take a more proactive position and put aside areas within the county to help species prior to them becoming endangered. My company, Acme Conservation Unlimited (ACU), was hired to create a map showing the suitable sites for the biological reserve systems within the county. These areas were based upon the various criteria that the experts in land use planning and conservation biology have described as being necessary for a biological reserve system. The suitable areas for a biological reserve system within Centre County must include:
-Greater than 70 bird and mammalian species combined
-Less than 10% of each study area occupied by buffered roads, highways, and interstates
-High habitat potential
-Publicly owned land
-Forested areas
-Slope less than 10% (King 2008)
I was assigned the task of incorporating the data supplied to ACU by the county, create new data based upon the existing data, and incorportate the data sets into a map showing the suitable areas within Centre County for biological reserves. The first step when working with raster data is to determine the cell size that will be used during the project. I chose 50, which was the coarsest cell size of the data sets supplied by the county. Next, I used the study areas supplied by the county and joined the data with the species richness data. I then selected all of the roads that intersected the study areas with a species richness of greater than 70 birds and animals. I applied a buffer around those roads and performed a union with the species rich study areas. This allowed me to save time and quickly calculate the percent of roads within the study areas, rather than calculating all of the areas within the road buffers, which would have taken much longer. This is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Map of Centre County, PA showing the species rich study areas (blue squares) and the buffered roads that intersect the study areas. This map was produced using ArcView 9.2 on March 16, 2008.
The suitable areas for a biological reserve needed to be located within forested portions of the county, within publicly owned land, and within land that had a high habitat potential. These criteria were relatively easy to find by querying the data for the suitable attributes and creating grids based upon those attributes. This is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Map of Centre County, PA showing the areas within the county that are forested, have a high habitat potential, are are located in public land. This map was produced using ArcView 9.2 on March 16, 2008.
Finally, I created a hillshade and a slope from the elevation grid. The hillshade was created to show a 3-D view of the county while the slope grid was used to determine the areas within Centre County that contained less than 10% slope. After this step, I used the raster calculator to combine the various criteria I had created into a calculation showing the suitable areas for the location of a biological reserve. Figure 3 is the final map layout, which shows the suitable locations for a biological reserve within the county. To aid the map user, I added a small data frame for reference that shows the location of Centre County within Pennsylvania.
Figure 3: Layout of Centre County, PA showing the suitable sites for the location of biological reserves. The suitable sites are shown in purple. A smaller data view in the upper right corner shows the location of Centre County within Pennsylvania. The layout was produced using ArcView 9.2 on Mary 16, 2008.
The final map layout highlights the suitable areas for the conservation areas. The areas vary in size and are scattered throughout the county. Approximately 25 square miles were suitable locations for a biological reserve within the county. I feel that this is good news for the county planners, because they have many options available for the location of their future biological reserves based upon my layout. The county planners can focus their efforts on all of the suitable areas; or, if budget is a concern, many of the smaller areas or a few of the larger ones. Regardless, by using my company and GIS, the county planners obtained an accurate, quickly produced map that will hopefully fit all of their planning needs
I anticipate that my final layout will not be the final map produced for the county. I expect that the county planners will have further questions or ideas that will help to refine the map. For example, the suitable area might have to be a certain size or be accessable from a certain size road. I could incorporate that data into my calculations and hone in on the specific area that would eventually be used for the biological reserve.
Source
King, Beth (2008) Problem Solving with GIS, Lessons 8, 9, and 10. The Pennsylvania State University World Campus Certificate Program in GIS. Accessed March, 2008.
This document is published in fulfillment of an assignment by a student enrolled in an educational program of The Pennsylvania State University. The student, named above, retains all rights to the document.