I am using ArcGIS 10 to calculate the road density of an area in km/sq.km. basically, I want to delineate forested areas that have a high road density and to study it's effect on species abundance and habitat use. I would like to understand the implications that the search radius has on the final output of the KDE. Should I just use the default values of ArcGIS for the search radius?
Suggestion - divide areas into habitat types, or communities depending on detail desired, such as forest, riparian, savanna, grasslands (managed), wetlands, riparian areas, ponds, etc., and determine road densities in total by habitat polygon, and total for habitat type. The polygon size as well as road density are fragmentation measures. You might also determine size of polygons that are bordered by roads, but not crossed by roads (roadless areas). Road buffer or proximity is going to be something that is more species specific, some are very sensitive, others tolerant of roads and disturbance.
Thank you, Dr. Hansen for your useful inputs. For now, I've just considered all forests to be of one class. But as suggested by you, I will further classify this into 4 more forest types and calculate fragmentation metrics for each type. Also, I have calculated the Euclidean distances of forest patches from road infrastructures. That would give me information on roadless areas I think.
Thank you, Dr. Hatten. I have calculated the road densities at different bandwidths (300, 500 and 1000 m) and will optimize the scale for each species. I had been using Fragstats only. And thank you for the paper as well. It's proven to be very useful!
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