{"id":2917032,"date":"2025-08-08T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/?post_type=blog&p=2917032"},"modified":"2025-08-08T08:21:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T15:21:18","slug":"create-species-range-rasters-from-polygon-features","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-pro\/mapping\/create-species-range-rasters-from-polygon-features","title":{"rendered":"From Vector to Raster: Create Species Range Rasters from Polygon Features"},"author":315222,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[22941],"tags":[150382,23011,29051],"industry":[],"product":[36551,36561],"class_list":["post-2917032","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","tag-arcgispro","tag-raster","tag-vector","product-arcgis-online","product-arcgis-pro"],"acf":{"authors":[{"ID":315222,"user_firstname":"Mark","user_lastname":"Gilbert","nickname":"Mark Gilbert","user_nicename":"mgilbert","display_name":"Mark Gilbert","user_email":"MGilbert@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2022-07-18 21:29:07","user_description":"Mark is a Principle GIS Engineer on the Living Atlas Environment team in Redlands, CA. He currently supports projects related to global climate projections and local climate resilience planning and mitigation using online data. He relies heavily on Python and Jupyter Notebooks to process raster datasets in his daily work. Previous experience in aerospace engineering and information technology helps him improve and automate global data processing workflows. Feel free to contact Mark at mgilbert@esri.com with questions or comments.","user_avatar":""}],"short_description":"What do you do when your favorite hosted image service gets retired? Learn how to convert vector features to rasters.","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Dealing with image service retirement<\/h2>\n

Sometimes services in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World get retired. This can happen as datasets get old, are no longer updated by the data owner, or receive very little engagement from the community. Users who rely on these image services for their work might be frustrated when those services retire. Validating and implementing changes in information products still takes time even with suggested replacements from Living Atlas.<\/p>\n

Service retirement is unavoidable. So, what can be done when an image service that you rely on is retired? There’s more than one answer to that question. But in this blog, we’ll show you one way of dealing with this situation and that’s to create raster data from vector data.<\/p>\n

Twelve image services from the United States Geological Survey\u2019s (USGS) Gap Analysis Project (GAP)<\/a> are retiring in December 2026. In this blog, we describe a workflow to download species range data in vector format from the USGS and transform it into raster data. This allows you to create your own replacement version of these species datasets.<\/p>\n

Creating a raster dataset from vector features is a common GIS workflow. This demonstration specifically covers creating species range rasters, but it can be easily modified to transform most any vector data.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Transform vector data to raster data<\/h2>\n

Converting vector data to raster data is common. The USGS already publishes the entire GAP species range and distribution data for download. This blog demonstrates how you can download and transform these vector datasets into rasters in preparation for the services retiring from Living Atlas.<\/p>\n

You can find the USGS GAP species range and habitat source data at the GAP website data page here<\/a> [https:\/\/www.usgs.gov\/programs\/gap-analysis-project\/data]. We will demonstrate the workflow using the USA Bighorn Sheep range data and a 30-meter land cover raster dataset from Living Atlas as a template. However, this workflow is easily adapted for other vector features and raster sizes.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Step #1: Download and extract the vector data<\/strong><\/h3>\n