Final Project: Finding Potential Locations for a New Biological Field Station

Introduction: Pigeon Lake—a biology field station—used to be an integral part of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s foundations of biology course as well as an educational retreat for other schools within the Eau Claire and Chippewa County. However, it recently closed. The purpose of this project is to find suitable land for a new biological field station in which 5 criteria are ideally met: 1) within forested area, 2) an appropriate distance from major roads, 3) nearby inland still waters (lakes, swamps, ponds, etc…), and 4) nearby moving waters (rivers and streams). These criteria are used in hopes they will provide the potential area for a new biology field station with diverse ecosystems to study and a greatly diverse resident organism population.

Data Sources: I originally gathered all necessary data from the UWEC database connection to Wisconsin DNR 2014 data and ESRI US Census data. This proved to have problems fitting together once projected. However, once I found feature classes within the Wisconsin DNR 2014 database to replace the ESRI data, the feature classes were able to line up properly. The earliest feature class I obtained from here was updated in 2011, so all feature classes are fairly recent. All metadata describes feature class attributes as the proper criteria needed for this project. I have no more remaining concerns surrounding the data.

Methods: Using model builder, I first projected all data layers to the NAD 1983 (2011) Zone 15N projected coordinate system (Figure 1). I then clipped all data layers by the study area layer (Eau Claire and Chippewa counties). I created a 1km buffer surrounding major roads and erased county forests within 1km of major roads. I then made a 3km buffer surrounding streams and a 5km buffer surrounding water bodies. All buffers were set to dissolve all internal boundaries. Finally, I intersected the county forest areas away from major roads, the streams buffer, and the water bodies buffer to create the data layer that contains suitable lands for a new biological field station.

Figure 1. The final model builder displaying the overall process of the project. This model builder was used to create the final map.

Results: The results yielded appropriate locations for a new biological field station if interest and budget allows for action (Figure 2).The locations fit all 4 criteria that helps to support biodiversity and diversity of habitats for educational purposes. 

Figure 2. Final map displaying possible locations for a new biological field station in Chippewa and Eau Claire County. 

Evaluation: This project contained very easy concepts and tools while also giving valuable information in the output. If I needed to do another project like this, I would not hesitate to agree to it. However, I did face some challenges during the process. Like I said previously, there was a problem with the original data from two separate sources that would not fit together once projected. There was also a technical issue of the model builder freezing up on the last intersect tool. However, that was mitigated by dissolving boundaries between feature classes created in previous steps. Eventually, the process ran correctly and the result was obtained. 

Sources: Wisconsin DNR 2014 Database