Species Distribution - What Analysis would work best?

Question

Hi all. I am fairly new to GIS and Esri software (Been using it around just half a year!), so apologies if this is a noob post.

My semester project involves looking at macroinvertebrate counts at 186 points and seeing if there is a correlation between species diversity and distribution and land use. My hypothesis is that urban areas would have more species (particularly chironomids) due to nutrients inputs from urban areas.

I was going to do a hot spot analysis, but that moreso involves density rather than diversity. I am interested to see what species like urban areas and what don't. What kinds of methods would work best for these kinds of analyses?

Thank you.

DanPatterson · Answer

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CarlyConticchio1 · Answer

Hello. I got my data from my state’s environmental protection agency, it is not my own. But from what I understand from the report, sites were chosen at random.

If  you mean the macro samples. They randomly sampled the location.   Then they counted the organisms until the reached 100 then IDs them. I knew that would be an issue for a density analysis. So I am just looking at a certain phylum on organisms rather than everything they collected.

DanPatterson · Answer

Was the sampling carried out in random sampling framework or some other approach?

The methodology of data collection can have a significant impact on any conjectures of data association with spatial location