A series of constraints were made to select the maple farm location. To achieve the goal, three tools were used in the Conda environment including Matplotlib for plotting as well as Numpy and Rasterio.
Table 1 Environmental conditions
Constraint | Range | Reason | File Information |
Elevation | Between 300 and 700m | Maples require warm day temps and cool night temps to produce large quantities of sap | In meters |
Roads | Must be within 250m of a road | In order to frequently collect sap, maple groves must be located near a road | 0 – outside buffer
1 – inside buffer |
CutBlocks | Must be within a cutblocks | In order to utilize newly cleared space for planting, a recent cutblock should be utilized | 0 – not a cutblock
1 - cutblock |
Hydrolines | Must be 2500m away from the Hydrolines | The scenic qualities of a Maple grove should be preserved in order to attract tourists | 0 – outside buffer
1 – inside buffer |
Area Quality | Must be at least a Quality index of over 417 | Must be in a quality growing site, and the minimum is 417 quality points | NA |
Canopy Height | Must be below 5 meters | Must have low canopy height in order for saplings to flourish | In meters |
Within bounds | Must be within the MKRF boundary | The site must be within the MKRF bounds, as this planting cannot occur elsewhere | 0 – outside MKRF
1 – inside MKRF |
Maple Growth Vegetation Index* | Must be between 0.95 and 1.05 | This narrow range of this index has been found to correlate with high sap output in Quebec – scientist are hoping to recreate the production here. | NA |
Fig.1 The results of each environmental condition. 1 – areas meet the requirement, 0 – areas not meet the requirement
Fig.2 The final locations of the proposed maple tree farm.
Fig.3 Final locations of the maple tree farm displayed over the true color image of the SPOT data. Black – maple tree farm locations