Week 5: Browns Pond Landscape Diversity Map

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Objective: generate a new grid on which values of 1 (low), 2 (medium), and 3(high) indicate the amount of landscape diversity in the immediate vicinity of each location within the Browns Pond area Input Grids: Elevation, Vegitation Logic: Edge zones are often replete with biological diversity. The solution described in the next few pages was an attempt to account for edge zones when deriving a landscape diversity grid for the Browns Poind Area Solution Overview: Identify edge zones in vegitation grid, both between types of forests, and between forest and open land. Then use focal statistics, variety, to attribute diversity score to each cell in vegitation grid. Identify areas of rapidly changing slop in elivation grid, then use reclassifying scheme to weight these areas in relation to sloped and flat areas. Combine two seperate landscapre diversity grids into unified diverisity map.
Elevaion Map Vegetation Map

Vegetation
0 = Open Field 1 = Hardwood Forest 2 = Softwood Forest 3 = Mixed Forest

Elevation

High : 350.5 Low : 228.7 5 ft. contour

5 ft. Contour Map

Vegetation Rendering (floating on elevation layer)

Vegetation Rendering (floating on its own values)

Elevation Rendering

In order to develop the procedure described on the following pages, some visulaizations were used to get a handle on the landscape diversity of the region in question. The contour map was ued to visualize areas of steep slope, as indicated by a high density of contour lines (areas that appear dark on the map). The elivation rendering to the left was used just to get a hand on the topogrpahy of the region. The vegitation rendering (floating on the elevation layer) was the first step towards developing a prodcedure to identify edge zones. The renedering below (floating on its own values) helped towards identifying the slope tool as the ideal tool to isolate edge regions.

INPUT: VEGETATION

This set of steps was used to identify the boundaries between the different types of forest as well as between forests and open fields.

INPUT: VEGETATION

This set of steps was used to identify the direction (aspect) of each forest edge.

Vegetation (input)
0 = Open Field 1 = Hardwood Forest 2 = Softwood Forest 3 = Mixed Forest

Slope (step 1a)

High : 4.5 Low : 0

Slope

Reclassify

Forest (steps 1a and 1b)

Not Forest Forest

Step 1: Identify edge zones by using the slope tool on the vegitation grid.

Step 1b: Identify forest by using the reclassfy tool. Reclassify 1, 2, 3 (all forests) as 1 and keep 0 (open field) as 0.

Aspect (step 2b)

open land North (0-22.5) Northeast (22.5-67.5) East (67.5-112.5) Southeast (112.5-157.5) South (157.5-202.5) Southwest (202.5-247.5) West (247.5-292.5) Northwest (292.5-337.5)

Raster Calculator

Aspect

North (337.5-360)

Step 2: Use raster calculator to identify all grid cells with slope greater than 0 (slope > 0), creating a grid of cells with value of 1, if on the egde of a forest, and 0 if not on the edge.

Step 2b: Calculate aspect of forest edges by using aspect tool on grid created in step 1b.

Edge Status (step 2a) Forest Edge

Step 3: Combine steps 2a and 2b into unified forest map, indicating three types of forests, as well as intra-forest edge zones, and forest/open space edge zones.

Raster Calculator/Reclassify

Step 4: Use a combination of raster calculatro and reclassify to make step 3 formal, creating a unified grid of 99 unique values indicating forest type and edge zone type. (note, legend not provided)

Step 6: Create final forest diverstiy grid by reclassifying grid from step 5 into three caregories by quantile. LEGEND
open land North (0-22.5) Northeast (22.5-67.5) East (67.5-112.5) Southeast (112.5-157.5) South (157.5-202.5) Southwest (202.5-247.5) West (247.5-292.5) Northwest (292.5-337.5) North (337.5-360) Intra-forest transistion zones 0 = Open Field 1 = Hardwood Forest 2 = Softwood Forest 3 = Mixed Forest

Focal Statistics: Variety

Step 5: Use focal statistics (3 cells by 3 cells), specifying the variety option, to create grid of cells ranging in value from 1 to 9, denoting variety of cells in immediate vacinity.

Intermediate Scores (step 5)

1 2 3 6 4 5 7 8 9

Vegetation Diversity Score (step 6)

1 - Low 2 - Medium 3 - High

INPUT: ELEVATION Elevation

High : 350.5 Low : 228.7 < 5 degrees > 5 degrees

Slope of Slope
Low : 0

High : 23.1

Slope Intensity

> 4 degrees slope of slope

Elevation Diversity
1 - Low 2 - Medium

Slope

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Raster Calculator

3 - High

Step 1: Slope tool was used to create a slope grid. Raster calculator then used to isolate cells with slope > 5 degrees Step 2: Slope tool used again to identify reate of change of slope. Raster calculator used to dientify areas of greatest rate of change
Raster Calculator

Step 3: Areas of intense slope, areas of no slope, and areas of rapidly changing slope combined (with weighting given to rapidly changing slope) to result in map at hte bottom right.

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Forest Diversity Grid

Elevation Diversity Grid

Raster Calculator/ Reclassify

Landscape Diversity
1 - Low 2 - Medium 3 - High

In the final step of the analysis I combined the two seperate landscape diversity scores to achieve a grid ranging from 1 to 6. Scores of six indicated a cell that scored 3 out of 3 on both individual landscape diversity scores, these cells were reclassified as a 3, or high landscape diversity. Cells ranging from 3 to 5 were reclassified as 2, or medium, and cells below 3 were reclassifed as low. Answer to brian teaser; As far as I can tell, you created the contrast image by subtracting the mean image from the original (although it appears you might have weighted the mean less than 1).
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