Input File Creation

[Garrick MacDonald]

Hi Michael,

How would you recommend I create the various input files (costs, perm_excluded, perm_included, representation) if I am not working with Maxant data? Currently, all my data is in binary raster files with the same extent and cell size. I have three individual binary species files, two binary exclusion files, and number of binary costs. 

I have tried python coding, but I have not been successful.

Any advise would be extremely helpful! I am using ConsNet for my thesis, and I really hope I can follow through with your software. 

Thank you,

GM

[Michael Ciarleglio]

Converting data from rasters to row-oriented data can be tricky.  ConsNet (and the helper program which converts Maxent data to ConsNet input files) want you to assign a unique ID to each cell so that we can be certain which cell we are talking about.  The rows in both the representation and the cost files are keyed by this cell ID.

Tools inside GIS may be able to help you convert the data from a raster to a tabular format.  My GIS skills are pretty weak (and also dated), so I can't give you a step by step guide.  But it goes something like this:

• Get GIS to think about each cell in your raster as a geographic feature.
  
• GIS will assign a "feature ID" (FID) to each cell.  This is a good value to use for the ConsNet cellID
  
• Now you can construct a table inside GIS that will have one row for each cell
  
• You can add columns/values to that table pulling values from your existing rasters
  
• During this process, make sure to exclude cells that are masked out of your analysis.  You could add a 0/1 column and filter them out at the end.
  

Here is some documentation about GIS tables from some ancient version of ArcGIS:  http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?TopicName=Creating_new_tables

Now that your data is row-oriented, doing the final adjustments will be much easier if you can get the data into Excel.  I recall that GIS has a bunch of wonky file types (specifically a dbfile) that modern Excel versions can no longer open.  Sometimes, your best bet on a small dataset is just to copy and paste the whole table (make sure you get every row).  Otherwise a tab delimited file or CSV text file will work.

Once you get it into Excel, there is one more trick that makes it super easy to create the ConsNet input file.  First, insert and populate any missing columns, add a header row, double check your work, etc.  Then, just highlight the data in Excel, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into a text document.  This process puts tabs in between the fields, which is exactly what ConsNet wants.  Save your text file and that should work.  Once you load it in ConsNet, use the "more data" button to inspect your cost layers and make sure they look okay.

mc

[Garrick MacDonald]

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for responding to my questions. I was successful in loading a subset of my data into ConsNet! I was able to make the Maxcon tool work with my data, and then I used a combination of Excel and Notepad methods to organize and prepare my final inputs. My task is to now scale up my data to the entire county of San Diego. I will most definitely contact you if I have any further complications. 

In addition, I am using your software for my master's thesis research. My master's is in GIScience, so I am very versed and experienced in GIS, and would be happy to help you answer any further GIS related ConsNet questions from other users. 

As always, thank you for your help.

- Garrick MacDonald

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 9:16:12 PM UTC-8, Garrick MacDonald wrote:

[Garrick MacDonald]

Hi Michael,

Can you please explain exactly how the "Objective Score" is being calculated? I understand that it is considering all the criteria scores in its final calculation, but beyond that I cannot find any detailed information in the ConsNet manual. 

Thank you,

GM

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 9:16:12 PM UTC-8, Garrick MacDonald wrote: