InVEST Habitat Quality

Science, Research & Data
1

Hello,

I have a couple of questions regarding accessibility and protected areas. I am working at the U.S. scale and have downloaded the Protected Areas layer (PAD-US) for my study area. This layer includes four GAP status classes (1–4), where the level of protection decreases from class 1 to class 4. In the context of the InVEST Habitat Quality model, this suggests that these classes should be assigned different accessibility or threat-related weights.

I was wondering if you have recommendations for appropriate weights for GAP Status 1 and 2, which represent fully or strongly protected areas. For example, would values such as 0.1 (or similarly low values) be reasonable, or would you suggest a different approach?

Additionally, once the Habitat Quality model is run and produces values ranging from 0 to 1, what range would you recommend classifying as highly suitable habitat if I want to categorize the output map (e.g., low, moderate, high quality)?

Bests,

Hazhir

2

Hi all, @dave @swolny @jesseG

I apologize for any inconvenience. Can someone please help with that?

Bests.

3

Hi Hazhir -

Regarding the appropriate weights for different GAP types, i think that’s up to you to know what “fully or strongly protected” means in practice. If it’s the case that “fully protected” means that the protected area does not allow incursion of any sort, and that’s actually enforced, then i think it’s appropriate to give it a value of 0 or something very low like 0.1.

As for classifying the result, i haven’t used this model enough to have an opinion. You might consult other studies that have used HQ and see how they’ve approached it. You can search NatCap and community publications via our Publications web page.

~ Stacie

4

Hi ~ Stacie,

Thank you so much for your message.

Hazhir