This map was created as part of coursework for the Environmental Applications GIS graduate-level course at the University of South Florida. In this example, I created suitability value layers for a hypothetical species that only nests in wetlands, only forages in coniferous forest, and will not nest close to roads.

I derived Suitability Value (SV) layers from binary landcover layers of roads, coniferous forest, and wetlands.

SV1 is a binary variable in which cells with a value of 1 represent wetland, and cells with a value of 0 represent non-wetland.

SV2 ranks the area immediately surrounding potential nest locations based on percentage of wetlands within a 100-meter radius. This was calculated using the Focal Statistics tool in ArcGIS Pro. Cells with values less than 25% were then assigned a value of 0. Values between 25% and 75% assigned based on the equation ((actual% - 25%)/50%). Lastly, cells with values greater than 75% were re-assigned a value of 1.

SV3 represents foraging area surrounding potential nest locations, based on percentage of coniferous forest within a 100-400 meter radius of any given cell. This was also calculated from a binary layer of coniferous forest using the Focal Statistics tool. In the resulting layer, cell values are percentages of coniferous forest within 100-400 meters of any given cell.

SV4 uses distance from roads as a measure for disturbance. A distance accumulation layer was created by first converting a roads feature layer into a binary raster layer, and then calculating Euclidian distance from any given cell to a cell with a value of 1. The distance accumulation layer was reclassified so that cells less than 100 meters from a road were assigned 0, cells that were greater than 400 meters from a road were assigned a value of 1, and all values in between were assigned based on the equation [1-[(400 - Actual)/300]].

The final habitat suitability index model (HSI) was calculated with the following equation: HSI = SV1 * [(SV2 + SV3 +SV4)].