Welcome back to part 2 of this week's discussion on suitability analysis and least cost pathing. This part picks up with a look at corridor analysis. Where it builds from the previous part is in creating suitability layers, applying them to a weighted overlay, and then building a cost distance model. Based on the following workflow, the below map is of ideal black bear movement areas between two regions of the Coronado National Forest. Based on the bears known habitats, various land cover types, and roadways, each layer was given a suitability factor. Those factors were then weighted, with landcover being primary at 60%, roads and elevations at 20% each. Then a cost-distance corridor was built based on these factors. Those areas are colored by ideal movement areas. Underlying the scene is a hillshade analysis and terrain relief generated from a digital elevation model.
The red corridor is the ideal movement corridor, and represents only a 1.1 multiplier to the total suitability result. This means that there was an ideal score, then this multiplier applied to it to generate that movement area. The orange is a 1.2 multiplier, and yellow area is a 1.3 multiplier. I think that these are important because when you extend out to the 1.2 and 1.3 multipliers you start to see secondary corridor bands like the smaller orange corridor. While the red is ideal, this still shows that there may be alternative considerations in play. The raw data however shows that the entirety of the region between the two closest portions of the Coronado regions would be viable. The highlighted areas are just Most viable.
While certainly a lot of work, with multiple levels of iteration in the products, this was a worthwhile investment of time to understand how these tools work, and build off each other. Thank you.
v/r
Brandon
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