Snail Farm Location Suitability Map
Click above for the suitability maps for snail farm location. The PDF on the left shows just buffers.
The map above is a simple one showing the existing roads, streams, and lakes with their respective 100-foot buffers. The three light blue "blurbs" are the three different sites that are in the running for this snail farm. The most eastern site is the most-suitable area so-far just based off of the buffers.
The map above is a composite analysis of the overlay landscape factors that are most appropriate for snail farming. The four factors that I took into account were Agricultural Soils, Human Modified, Land Cover, and Slope. These all are important things to consider when developing a snail farm. The orange is the low-priority areas while the green is the higher-priority. Meaning, the orange areas have the highest amount of human modification, slope, etc. and can be deemed as not-so-great areas for this specific use. Agricultural soils are extremely important to the snails because their diet predominately consists of fruits and vegetables. The more human modification there is, the less-suitable this site is to me. Lastly, snails will not want to live (and really could not thrive) in areas with high slopes.
In Lab 10, we were to further our research about the suitability of a site for potential snail farming. Above is the first scenario that I developed that took into account various development scenarios such as parking, picnic areas, recreational spaces, etc. This specific scenario (Scenario A) also includes recreational biking trails (orange line) and a small amount of access roads. The area set aside for the active recreations is 133 Acres in an area of 63.9% medium developmental suitability. Also, the parking lot has an allocated 32.48 Acres set in an area of 80.0% medium suitability. This specific site is good for development and will be a successful space for recreation activities.
Here is Scenario B. In this case, biking trails have been completely removed with hiking trails being introduced. More access roads and an increased area in the agricultural ranch are also improvements. The agricultural ranch sits on 16.05 Acres of land with a 19.2% high developmental potential.