Lavanya- Habitat Analysis

The Black Hills mountain snail is a land snail that was once widespread and abundant throughout its range, but is now rare and critically imperiled. It is endemic to the forests of Black Hills, an isolated mountain range in western South Dakota and northeast Wyoming.
The cooperi taxon was originally described as a full species, Oreohelix cooperi (Binney 1859), but later assigned to the subspecies Oreohelix strigosa cooperi (Shimek 1890). The Black Hills mountainsnail is also commonly known as Cooper’s rocky mountainsnail.
These snails prefer limey soils in the cool and dense coniferous forests, and is rarely found above an elevation of 1600m or below 1200m. This analysis performs an overlay using digital elevation model (DEM), geology, and vegetation spatial layers to determine habitat conducive for this sensitive species.
Additionally, thinning forests stands in close proximity to roads may pose a risk to the snail habitats. Therefore, using the distance accumulation tool and roads spatial layer, we can identify habitats within 200m of the roads as a potential risk and less than ideal habitat conditions.

Lavanya Gopal GIS | Data Science | Remote Sensing | Engineering