What kind of models/techniques can be used with GIS spatial analysis in order to determine habitat suitability for a species that is not (widely) present in a certain region? For my bachelor honours thesis I want to determine whether the otter could establish a viable population at a specific site. Although there has been multiple sightings through the years in this park (250,000ha), there is not a stablished population yet. The otter population is increasing steadily around in neighbouring states and recolonisation is highly likely. I have identified a set of conditions that must be fulfilled (distance to roads, forest and waterbody density, population density nearby, etc), and I want to determine if this site fulfils the criteria or whether the area would not be suitable for dispersal. Also if the suitable sites are identified as patches I want to determine the connectivity and whether passages need to be built at specific locations.
I find that habitat suitability models and tools such as MaxEnt require data about the species distribution. I am wondering whether there is a tool that could be used to predict habitat suitability in this manner or am I limited to basic spatial analysis in GIS?
I really appreciate your help, due to COVID-19 I see myself being forced to work with modelling and probably software that I am not fluent with instead of more practical lab work that I am used to.
Dear Nasir, thank you so much for your answer, this tool seems very helpful indeed!
Dear Michelle Lara, there are a number of techniques used for habitat suitability. MaxEnt is a good choice for presence/absence species distribution modeling. We have employed it in plants in our published manuscripts. It has been widely used in the modeling of animals too. However, as you want to perform habitat suitability using GIS without presence/absence data, I would suggest you Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as devised by Saaty, 1980. It is a popular multi-criteria evaluation technique that is popular and widely used for habitat suitability. We have recently published a manuscript in Applied Geomatics - a Springer Nature journal on Land Suitability Analysis of Apple using GIS and AHP method. If you are interested to read these publications then I can share you or you can access them from my RG profile.
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