Reference no: EM133700754

Report: Environmental Modelling in QGIS

Area is far north Queensland

Introduction

This is your second piece of written assessment for the unit. It tests the skills and knowledge you have acquired in the unit within all weeks of the unit (particularly the applied skills from weeks 7 to 10). This second assignment provides a reflection on your ability to demonstrate comprehensive spatial analysis and cartographic skills using QGIS. The assignment will tailor your spatial analysis to address a specific geographical issue that can benefit from using spatial research to support more effective environmental decision-making. The assignment will allow you to demonstrate your knowledge around map algebra and analysis, data compatibility and standardisation, environmental modelling and the use of QGIS spatial analytics. It is worth 40% of the unit assessment.

Requirements
Word limit: 2200 words maximum

Submission format: Word or PDF
Word or PDF file size: less than 10mb. Note - if your file size is too large you may experience problems submitting your report.
There is a limit to the number of maps (see below)
Please note there are penalties for infringing these requirements - full guidelines are in the unit outline document for you to refer to. These include items that are included in the word count, penalties for exceeding the word count and/or incorrect file submission (and size), late submissions and plagiarism.

Assignment - Scenario
You are acting as a consultant on behalf of a local conservation agency and you have successfully submitted a bid to conduct a GIS-based study to recommend a wildlife corridor based on species interactions and to consider environmental risk for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).
In proposing your study, you have presented the broad methodology applied in our labs to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Feedback from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is as follows:
They are happy with the broad approach.
They would like you to review, clarify and justify all standardisation and weightings used in the study.
They would like you to consider a number of different wildlife corridor options as follows:
Generate two cost surfaces.
Consider three discrete pairs of start and end points.
Conduct the least cost path analysis for each of your three pairs of start/end points using both cost surfaces.
This will give you a total of six wildlife corridor options.
Recommend one preferred corridor.
They would like you to incorporate a relevant predator (or competitor) species into your wildlife corridor assessment.
The road data provided for this study has a different structure to that used in the lab process. You should evaluate how to best use this data in your analysis.
They would like you to incorporate adaptive capacity as negative values within the framework in a similar manner to that adopted by Gai et al. (2011).
They would like you to include water storage tanks as part of your adaptive capacity framework.
In Tasmania, they would like you to also include Emergency Meeting Points in your adaptive capacity framework.
In other regions, they would like you to allow for boundary/edge effects in your study.

They would like you to adapt the fire hazard/risk approach and terminology used to reflect the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFRDS) terminology that came into place in September 2022. Specifically, you must adopt a four-level linguistic scale for articulating hazard and risk rather than the five-level scale used in the approach adopted to date.

Assignment Details

For this assignment you will conduct an analysis and generate a report that uses the spatial data provided to you for processing within QGIS. As with your first assignment, you will need to be both precise and concise in reporting your findings. You will need to write your report in a professional manner fit for presentation to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. You are acting on behalf of a local conservation agency to undertake analysis to spatially investigate the wildfire threats to a selected native species. To complete the assignment, you are provided with the following information:

Spatial data for your allocated region
Guidelines on what to include in your report
A grading matrix on how you will be assessed
To complete your assignment, you will have to use the QGIS skills you have learnt in the labs to process the data provided and produce the required outputs. If you cannot remember how to undertake these analyses, then you will need to refer to the lab instructions and apply them to the new data that you are using for your assignment.

Be careful to ensure you are answering the required tasks for the assignment (below), as you are not required to undertake all of the processing that you completed for the lab data.

Topic 1: This topic will investigate the environmental threats to your native species in the state of Tasmania

Topic 2: This topic will investigate the environmental threats to your native species in the Far North region of Queensland

Topic 3: This topic will investigate the environmental threats to your native species in the Hunter River Catchment in New South Wales

You will need to download species data from the ALA in raw format and you will need to check the metadata and all related files to familiarise yourself with the data that you are using and how to cite your data. You will need to check your incoming data to make sure that you understand the attributes within the file and that you consider the type of observation, date of observation and spatial accuracy of observation.

Your assignment analyses

As a minimum for your species and allocated region you will need to complete the following analyses in QGIS:

Identify the core territory and total home ranges of your native species.
Using ruggedness, proximity to native vegetation, state roads, and appropriate land uses, plus the presence of a relevant predator or competitor species to construct two standardised cost surfaces using different weighting protocols. You will need to provide the rationale for why you selected these weighting protocols in your report.
Use your two cost surfaces to consider three discrete pairs of start and end points to consider a total of six wildlife corridor options (i.e. consider two possible alignments between each pair of start and end points - do not use any of the start points more than once).
From this analysis, recommend one preferred habitat corridor (note that you do not have to aim for the longest corridor, but rather select options that you consider will achieve the best environmental outcomes). You will need to provide the rationale for why you selected this option in your report.
Using elevation, slope, aspect, land cover, temperature and wind speed generate a weighted spatial distribution of potential fire hazard.
Determine the potential fire emergency response (adaptive capacity) by calculating a weighted spatial distribution combining road, fire station and relevant water sources.
Calculate the population exposure for your native species, and then the vulnerability of this species by weighting with the adaptive capacity.
Using appropriate weights generate the spatial distribution of fire risk through combining your hazard and vulnerability outputs to determine the overall fire risk to the native species.