what Arc tool is used to find "distance from river" to the points?

[JKBellamkonda]

i need to find out distance from river to the points, which are stoat visiting places, so that i can add it to my stoat visiting attribute table to use it further in my regression table.

[AnthonyGiles]

Your best tool is near analysis, but it is only available with an advanced licence:

ArcGIS Help 10.1

general help on proximity tools can be found here:

ArcGIS Help 10.1

Regards

Anthony

[RichardFairhurst]

Use Linear Referencing and convert your rivers to routes with measures.  Then use the Locate Features Along Route tool with the Distance option checked.  This will not only tell you the side distance and the side the point was on (positive/negative corresponds to left/right), but it also tells you the measure or station along the river line where the point fell.  The event table can be displayed as points that overlap the original points except where the point is not actually perpendicular to the line (but the side distance will still be accurate).  These LR Tools are available with all license levels.  It is better than the Near tool for distances from linear features.  It is wise to make sure each point has a unique ID other than the ObjectID prior to running the tool if you want to do data transfers back to the original points.

[FilipKrál]

Hi JK,

Anthony Giles‌ and Richard Fairhurst‌ both have excellent ideas, I just want to add that this kind of question is often addressed by using Euclidean Distance (Spatial Analyst) tool to generate a raster surface where value of each cell indicates distance of that cell to the nearest river. Then you can use Extract Values To Points in order to get the distance values for each of your stoat visiting place.

This is just another one of many options. You should be able to decide what will work for you considering your spatial resolution, number of points, area of interest, etc.

Regards,

Filip.

[JKBellamkonda]

Hi Filip,

I used the Euclidean Distance and then added the information using Add Surface Tool, would it make any difference by using Extract Values To Points?. By the way when i do OLS(ordinary least squares regression) to identify the relationship between stoat visits and the variables[Elevation,Relative elevation 100m, Relative elevation 500m,Mean slope,Distance to river], the tool result is an exclamation mark but it does produce the OLS shape file, coefficient table and diagnostic table. Does that mean its allowed to use as a model or not?

[FilipKrál · Accepted solution]

Hi, if Add Surface Tool works for you that's fine, there are usually more ways to do similar things.

I am not sure I understand your question whether it can be used as a model. I haven't used the Ordinary Least Squares tool in ArcGIS so I am not sure what the exclamation mark means. Check the documentation.

Can the tool be used in Model Builder?

Yes.

Is the model 'good enough and informative'?

You should be able to tell based on the report file or the console output as described in  Interpreting OLS results  . Are you saying you don't get this kind of report but just an exclamation mark?

How do the other outputs look like? Especially the coefficients table.

F.