GIS4048 - Module 6 - Suitability Analysis (Part 2)

For the second part of this module, we were tasked to identify a least cost wildlife corridor between two sections of the Coronado National Forest. The goal was to identify potential movement routes for black bears by combining environmental criteria into a suitability model, converting that model into a travel cost surface, and then using corridor analysis to locate low cost connection areas between the parks. 

I did this by creating three suitability rasters on a scale of 1 - 10 using the reclassify tool. These were the distance to roads, elevation, and land cover, with values assigned according to their relative importance for black bear habitat.

I then used the Weighted Overlay tool to combine these layers, assigning weights of land cover 60%, elevation 20%, and distance to roads 20% creating a suitability map. I then inverted the suitability raster (10 – suitability) to create a cost surface where highly suitable areas became low cost travel zones. I calculated the cost distance surfaces from each of the two park polygons and used the Corridor tool to find areas where the combined travel cost from both parks was the shortest. To show just the most likely used paths, I used a threshold to extract the corridor area to make a defined connection between the park area.