Habitat Analysis
Tutorial data


About this folder
The data in this folder forms the tutorial data for the book Using ArcGIS Geoprocessing Tools. In the tutorial you'll locate areas with the best potential for supporting the Californian gnatcatcher, a non-migratory songbird that lives in south-western California and north-western Baja. Like so many species today, the gnatcatcher population has been in decline due to urban areas encroaching on its habitat. In exercise 1 you'll find patches of coastal sage scrub near proposed roads. In exercise 2 you'll join fields to the vegetation data. In exercise 3 you'll add a script to a toolbox to clip multiple datasets. In exercise 4 you'll create a new model to find potential high quality habitat patches. In exercise 5 you'll create a new model, add the model created in exercise 4, and find areas of high quality habitat that might be impacted by the proposed roads. The impacted high quality habitat patches should be identified to see if there are indeed gnatcatchers present, and the roads impacting habitat patches should be assessed to see if there alternative routes that can be taken. Below are brief descriptions of the data sources used in the tutorial.


  • Climate - Shapefile representing general climate zones.


  • Elevlt250 - Shapefile representing areas where the elevation is less than 250m.


  • Majorrds - Shapefile representing all major roads and freeways.


  • Study_quads - Shapefile representing the extent of the study area.


  • Slopelt40 - Shapefile representing areas where the slope of the land is less than 40%.


  • Veg_table - DBF file containing information to be joined to vegtype.


  • Vegtype - Feature class representing vegetation type information.


  • Futrds - Feature class representing proposed roads.