What's new in ArcGIS tutorials August 2024
Calculate landslide potential for communities affected by wildfires
Wildfires make the landscape more susceptible to landslides when rainstorms pass through an area after wildfires. Post-fire debris flows are particularly hazardous because they can occur with little warning, can exert great impulsive loads on objects in their paths, and can strip vegetation, block drainage ways, damage structures, and endanger human life. Often there is not enough time between a fire and a rainstorm to implement an effective emergency response plan. However, various post-fire debris-flow hazard as
Prepare data for species distribution modeling
The European badger (Meles meles) plays an important role in shaping species diversity. Considered an ecosystem engineer, badgers provide three main ecosystem services: seed dispersal, topsoil disturbances, and microhabitat creation. While the European badger is not considered threatened, it is a widely hunted species, and is also susceptible to many diseases. Decreases in the badger population may cause disruption to its important ecosystem services.
In this tutorial, you'll focus on acquiring and setting up the data that would be needed for species distribution modeling, such as land cover, slope and elevation, and bioclimate. The data available for European badgers represents presence, or locations where a badger has been observed. Most models, such as random forest and regression, also require some kind of data on where the species wasn't present. While you can't create true absence data, which shows definitively that a species is not present in a location, you can use a variety of methods to create pseudo absence, or background data. These points provide additional information to the model about environmental conditions. Pseudo absence or background points can be generated in multiple ways depending on the analysis you plan to run, potential bias within the presence data, and the analysis question you hope to answer. You'll create pseudo absence points using random generation.
Finally, you'll extract environmental data to these points. According to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), badgers prefer easily dug, well-drained soils, with good vegetation cover within foraging habitats. In central Spain, badgers prefer mid-elevation mountain areas with woodland and pastures, and avoid lower elevations.
Use demographic data to study regional markets
You work for a regional convenience store chain, Casey's General Stores. You are hoping to expand your market to the southwest side of your existing territory, and do not want to intrude on the territory of your competitor to the southwest, Allsup's. You will work to gain a better understanding of your chain's region and plan an ideal location using GIS tools, business and demographic data, and the geographic approach. In this tutorial, you will use points of interest search and color-coded maps to examine the data. You will study the chains' territories, examine their sales volume, incorporate projected population numbers, and propose a new market based on your analysis.