The purpose of my project is to do a spatial analysis of Vancouver Island and decide where the best place to put a fish habitat.  son I decided to look into this is because for one, there was available information on Vancouver Island located in the SIS 355 data folder.  This folder called, van_core provided information that was useful for developing my idea about fish habitats.  The second reason why I wanted to look into the idea of fish habitats is that of they are used to protect, conserve, and enhance the fish and not to forget the other wildlife that live in these areas.  Fish stocks in BC are dying out for many reasons, but some of main one is lack of clean environments that the fish can reproduce in.   If there was an area present that could help increase the out put of fish stocks, then this should be developed and maintained.  The third reason I decided to look into this was because I have a great interest in wildlife and I feel that any type of wildlife should be protected.  The animals are able to survive due to the available subsistence that is presented to them in nature, but if there is no protected place that they can live in then, they will not be able to survive.  Therefore, these are the three main reasons why I wanted to look at the best location for a fish habitat on Vancouver Island.

    The data found in the SIS DATA folder gave many themes that could be used in the development of my project.  I had to look into the ones that I thought would best suit my project and then put them into my project file.  I then decided what methods of spatial analysis should I do on my project that would allow me see the results that I wanted.  I did a great deal of reclassifying my maps so that the information needed would be seen on them.  Then I overlayed a number of them to show the areas that consisted of landuse, streams, hydrolines, roads, and watersheds.  Then from these maps, I came up with some ideas that would give the best place for a fish habitat to be.

    One of the first ideas I dealt with was that of find where the best site would be in relation to a watershed.  I felt that outside the watershed would be the best area, because there are always things that are going on in watersheds that can disturb the reproduction of fish.  I then put some constraints on the major rivers in the area.  I decided that major rivers are no the best place for reproduction as well because there are many things that go on in rivers.  For example, the Fraser River is a major river that used for commercial fishing and many large tugs and boats travel up and down the river that can disturb the natural habitats of the fish.  I then did a buffer on the hydrolines that were present in the area because I found that some of the hydrolines to Vancouver Island are underwater and I felt that the fish should be kept away from this area because it can not be good for them to be close to the hydrolines that have a tonne of wattage running through them.

    These were the three most important aspects of the information that were given from the Vancouver Island file that could be used to show the best area for a fish habitat site.  After the results were shown, I realized that the place that I felt would be the most suitable place was not present on the map.  Therefore, from the stipulations that I gave as certain boundaries for the likely outcome proved to show area that were less likely to be the best locations for the fish habitat.  Although, the area that I suggested to be the most likely location may not be the best location, due to information that I may have missed in my analysis of the area.

    Overall, the areas that were presented on the map could have been likely locations because they did fit the criteria that was present, but it did not prove the area that I suspected.  Therefore, this project is a great idea, but the outcomes may not be what you expected or wanted.  You can not just rely on this data to show you the best place for a fish habitat because there is much more data that needs to be considered before the development of this habitat that was not available from the information that was presented to me.