The Northern Goshawk is a coastal bird and its habitat is constrained within close proximity of the coastline. The human populations located in the lower mainland and on Vancouver Island have some influence on the distribution of the Goshawk’s habitat.
By mapping the human population distribution using the dissemination area population, it is apparent that the Goshawk habitat areas, which are denoted by the green blotches, are located far away from the large cities of Victoria and Vancouver in the south; the largest concentration of Goshawk habitat is located on the north end of Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast. The habitats are constrained to the northern portion of the map because the Goshawk is sensitive to urban development and Human presence; this theory is supported when a hotspot analysis of the human population distribution is applied:
A hotspot analysis is applied to the study area, with red denoting areas with the highest population density and blue denoting areas with the lowest population density.
The habitats of the Northern Goshawk are clustered in the cold spots or in the insignificant areas further away from Courtenay and Campbell River. To avoid a large skew in the data, the Vancouver and Victoria metropolitan areas were removed from the data. By eliminating the metropolitan areas the hotspots in the rural areas, where the Goshawk habitat is located, are delineated more clearly; the inclusion of the metropolitan areas would greatly decrease the prevalence of the hotspots where they are significant to the research.