GEO 265 Project, Option 2

Endangered Species X
Due by 5:00 p.m., 12/05/03

Species X is endangered and the U.S. Congress has appropriated money to develop one or more refuges in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. We need to find areas that meet certain requirements in order to set aside refuges. The following criteria must be met in order for Species X to thrive:

• It only lives in the Willamette valley (Creating a new shapefile)
• It cannot survive within 1 mile of cities (Creating a new shapefile and buffering)
• About half of the refuge must be within 1 mile of fresh water including wetlands (Clipping and buffering). It is preferable that wetlands, streams, and rivers be within the boundaries of the refuges. Try to make five to 10 percent of the refuge wetlands.
• It can only live in geology types of Q (Quaternary) and TMV (Tertiary-Miocene volcanic) (Clipping and changing the display of themes)
• It has been spotted a few times in the wild recently. You can use this data, which has been saved as a dBase IV file (.dbf) to guide you to areas that may be suitable (Adding an event theme). Your refuges should have at least one known location within the boundaries.
• The refuges need to be a at least 50 sq. miles large, but >100 sq. miles is preferred (Drawing a rectangle or polygon)
• The shape of the refuge can be irregular- it does not have to be a rectangle

Skills needed for this project:

• Creating new GIS data layers
• Retrieving data via the Internet
• Clipping data layers
• Buffering data layers
• Drawing polygons (on-screen digitizing)

Before you begin, take a moment to look at the rest of the projct, including the outputs at the end (and units of the data sets are in feet). Please prepare a flowchart of the steps in the project to help you keep track of you analysis.

Hints for getting started

1. Copy the folder SpeciesX from the Data folder on the server to your student account: or zip drive

2. Open ArcMap

3. Open a new view and add the following data:

… Ecoregio.shp, Streams.shp, Outline.shp, Cities.shp, Geology.shp

… Wvnatwet.shp (http://www.gis.state.or.us/data/index.html) Willamette Valley Natural Wetlands

Create the Willamette Valley Theme

It only lives in the Willamette valley

Isolate the Willamette valley

Create a Willamette Valley Cities layer and Buffering (Be Sure to Save Your Work Early and Often!)

It cannot survive within 1 mile of cities.

Create a layer of cities that are in the Willamette Valley, then buffer the cities to 1 mile

Create a Willamette Valley Streams layer and buffer it (Save Your Work!)

About half of the refuge must be within 1 mile of fresh water and/or wetlands

Clip out the streams that are in the Willamette Valley, then buffer the Willamette Valley streams to 1 mile

Think about and describe in your project report why you put buffers around cities and streams?

Create and display a Willamette Valley Geology layer(Save Your Work!)

It can only live in geology types of Q and TMV. It has been spotted recently in the wild.

Clip out the geology theme, and change the way the data are displayed (e.g., try displaying codes as a "unique value")

Select three refuge sites.

You should now have all of the themes you need to do the analysis. Create three refuges, one in the northern valley, one in the mid-valley and another in the southern valley. You'll definitely want to select the area of the refuge and message the area in square miles.

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WHAT TO TURN IN:

A 5-10 page, double-spaced report comprised of the following sections:

1. Introduction: a brief description of the geographic problem;
2. Data: a brief description of the data used for the analysis (not just how you retrieved the data but WHAT you retrieved, i.e., a description of the data types (point, line, polygon, image?) and what they are supposed to represent), as well as your criteria for selecting these data;
3. Methods: an overview of the analysis procedures, including a description and graphical flowchartof all the major GIS steps that you completed;
4. Discussion/Conclusion: including
   • How many refuges you chose and why.
   • What flaws existed in the way that you had to treat cities? What would you do differently if had a shapefile of city limits (boundaries)?
   • Why did you prefer that streams, rivers, and wetlands be located within the refuges instead of just within 1.0 mile?
5. References

Please DO NOT user first person in your narrative (this is considered to be unprofessional).

PLEASE DO include page numbers in your paper (please don't forget)!!!

In addition, please make sure that your term paper includes:

• A map showing the study area in the context of the State of Oregon or the Pacific Northwest (use insets and locator maps). A shapefile of an outline of the state of Oregon (outline.shp) is available if you choose to add this. You may also want to use grat.e00, cities.shp, and Ecoregio.shp. You could develop your own map of the PNW from the map of the US found in C:\esri\esridata\usa or your could use your own source. More data for Oregon can be found at www.gis.state.or.us/data/.
• Include at least one map for your results showing the new refuges. Include rivers, wetland, cities, the geology, and whatever buffers you wish to show. If you wanted you could make maps that zoom into specific refuges.
• All maps must have a north arrow, scale bar, title, your name, credits, legend, and a neat line in an uncluttered layout.
• In your paper refer to your maps as Figure # or Map #. Put the names on your map. Use as many maps as you need to show your results.

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Last updated: November 20, 2003

Original author: Becci Dale, Grad student, OSU Geosciences
http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/arc/species_x.html

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