Finding possible habitat of firefly in Ube city, GIS Learning Part I

Firefly is one of the most popular insects in Japan. At some rivers in Yamaguchi prefecture, firefly is designated as a natural monument by the national government. Knowing potential habitats is a critical task to preserve firefly habitat.

Firefly habitat is located: within 500 meter from fresh water, more than 1 km away from urban area and buildings, and more than 50 meter away from road.

Task :

• Write a report of this exercise.
• Clearly describe the procedure of analysis using screen shots.
• Draw the habitat map as neat as possible, together with the habitat area.
• Add some words about ideas how you can use GIS for your own field of interest.

Answer :

To know butterfly habitat in Ube city using ArcGis, we have to determine the suitable limitation area of the butterfly. At the first we should know the limitation of environtment that are good for butterfly by make buffer area within 500 meter of fresh water. At the second we should determine the worse area for the butterfly by make a buffer area within 1 km from urban area and buildings and 50 meter from roads. Then we should make shapefile for each buffer area of good and worse environtment of butterfly.

After we know the buffer area of good and worse environtment for the butterfly, then we should erase the good environment shapefile by the worse environtment shapefile. And finally the result should clip by boundary of Ube city. The result would be the possible area of butterfly.

From those analysis I found that the total possible area of butterfly in Ube City are 48.664.408,66 m2 or 4.866,44 Hectares or 48,66 Km2.     

Procedure Of Analysis :

Datas that I used to find the possible habitat of butterfly consist of five shapefile they are buildings, open watter, roads, ube city boundary, and urban area. I need to know the spatial reference of each data. From the ArcCatalog, I found that coordinate system of the original data is WGS 1984. Because I will calculate the data, I need to use Projected Coordinate System within the zone 52N of UTM. 

To analysis data shapefile, I change data frame properties to Projected Coordinate System within the zone 52N of UTM. But the original data (shapefile) still in their original spatial reference Geographic Coordinate System WGS 1984.

Then I input the open watter, buldings, urban area, roads, and ube city boundary shapefile to the ArcMap just the following picture (picture 5).

Now i am ready to analysis the data. At the first I will determine the suitable area for the butterfly. The condition that good for the butterfly are within 500 meters from fresh watter. So, by using ArcGis, I make buffer from the open watter within 500 meters. This analysis show in picture 6. Next analysis is to determine the worse condition for butterfly. The condition are more than 1 km away from urban area and buildings and more than 50 meter away from road. By using ArcGis, I make buffer from building, road, and urban area. The result of this analysis is shown by picture 10 below.

The next analysis is to determine the worse habitat for the butterfly. Worse habitat for butterfly are combination of 3 buffers area they are building buffer, urban area buffer and roads buffer. To combine those data, I used union analysis as shown in picture 11.  The result of this analysis shown in picture 12.

This result of union analysis has some FID and Id. To find the possible habitat for the butterfly, I need combine the good environtment (fresh watter buffer) with worse environtment (union of road buffer, buildings buffer, and urban area buffer). So at the fisrt I need to dissolve the union data as shown in picture 12.

The next analysis is erase the good habitat of butterfly (fresh watter buffer) by worse habitat of butterfly (buildings buffer, urban area buffer, and roads buffer). The result of this analysis shown by picture 15.

The final analysis is to clip the buffer area that are outside the Ube city boundary. This analysis is using clip tools in the tool box. This analysis shown in the following picture.

The final map of the possible habitat for the butterfly in Ube city is shown in the following map.