GEOG5222 Final Project

Identifying Priority Conservation Areas in Centre County

John Taber

    
  Sites
Figure 1:  This image shows the study sites that are the framework for data collected for this study.  This theme was joined to a table showing number of bird and animal species observed at each site.  This was then queried to determine which sites have a sufficient species richness.  Blue squares show those sites that have at least 75 bird and mammalian species.  Red squares show all other sites.
Roads     Figure 2: The next step is to identify those areas that are too close to a road - a potential study site must not have more than 10% of its area closer than one hundred meters from an interstate, fifty meters from a highway, or twenty meters from a road.  This figure shows all Centre County roads in red.  Appropriate buffers for those roads that intersect the "rich sites" are in green.
Habitat
Figure 3: Analysis of the "rich sites" and the road buffers produced those sites which have 75 species and have at least ninety percent of their area outside the road buffers.  These areas are in red here.  That theme is overlaying one that shows habitat potential.  Areas identified as high potential are in green here; low potential is in yellow.  These themes were intersected to derive the candidate reserve sites shown in Figures 4 and 5.
Land Ownership
Figure 4: Here the candidate reserve sites, shown in brown, overlay a theme showing land ownership.  Public lands are in green, and privately owned land is pink.
Hillshade
Figure 5:  This image shows elevation with hillshade for Centre County, again overlain by the candidate reserve sites.
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