Shasta Owl's Clover Habitat Site Suitability Analysis
Tools Used: Extraction, Surface Analysis, Reclassify
Skills Used: Creating a hillshade from a DEM, create slope and aspect layers, reclassify raster datasets
Project Description: The purpose of this raster analysis technique is to identify suitable habitat on the slopes of Mt. Shasta for a critically endangered wildflower Orthocarpus pachystachyus, Shasta owl’s-clover. This species was assumed to be extinct until 1996, when eight individual plants were identified in the vicinity of Mt. Shasta. Given the terrain variables (elevation, slope, and aspect) at the locations of these observations, I identified other areas that have similar characteristics and are more likely to provide habitat for Shasta owl’s-clover.
This process assumes that if a plant was able to grow in one position with a particular elevation, slope, and aspect, these values represent “suitable” habitat. Using multiple observations, I looked at the terrain variables at each location to build up a range of suitable values for each variable (elevation, slope, and aspect). Once these guidelines were established, I created a map that shows where the extents of all three variables overlap-- the suitable habitat range.