Create HSM Remap Table

Corridor Designer Tools · Habitat Suitability Modeling · interactive window · by Jeff Jenness

Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level

Summary

One of the first steps in modeling habitat for the Corridor Designer tools. This window allows you to take a species expert's suitability scores for different habitat variables — the translation from each factor's raw values to the 0–100 scale — and save them as remap tables that Create Habitat Suitability Model reads. It replaces the original CorridorDesigner workflow of hand-editing tab-delimited text files: pick the factor raster, and the window builds the scoring grid for you — each class value for a categorical raster, from–to ranges for a continuous one — ready for scores straight off the expert's spreadsheet.

Learn more About Corridor Design covers how habitat factors are chosen and scored on the 0–100 scale. Step 4 of the Corridor Design Tutorial builds the four black bear remap tables in this window from the species expert's template files, with the tutorial data (41 MB) available to download so you can follow along.

What it writes

A remap table: one row per class or range of the factor raster, giving the raw value (or the low and high ends of a range) and the suitability score it maps to. That table is what Create Habitat Suitability Model reads to turn a land-cover, elevation, topographic-position or distance raster into a 0–100 suitability layer. Scores follow the CorridorDesigner biological anchors (100 best … 0 absolute non-habitat; see the scale discussion on the Create HSM page), and the window keeps continuous ranges contiguous so no raster value falls through a gap.

The format is a secondary matter and follows the destination: a geodatabase gets a remap table (FromValue / ToValue / NewValue), a folder gets an ASCII remap file in the original CorridorDesigner format, so legacy species files and new geodatabase projects live side by side, and either kind feeds the HSM tool.

A tour of the window

The window scores one raster at a time. Pick the raster, look at how its values are distributed, decide whether to score it class by class or range by range, fill in the scores, and save the table. The example is the black bear land cover from the Corridor Design Tutorial, a categorical raster of 46 vegetation classes scored by value.

The Corridor Designer Tools gallery open on the ribbon, with the Create HSM Remap Table button, in the Habitat Suitability Modeling row, outlined in blue — Where to find it: **Create HSM Remap Table** is in the *Habitat Suitability Modeling* row of the *Corridor Designer Tools* gallery, in the Corridor Designer Tools group of the *Wildlife and Forestry* tab.

The Create Reclass Tables window for the aml_landcover raster: at top the Select Raster path with Browse and a blue help icon; on the left a Distribution panel with a bar histogram of the 46 class codes shaded by their scores and a statistics box giving minimum 1, maximum 46, mean 16.3, standard deviation 9.17, 5,948,136 data cells and 484,409 NoData cells; on the right a Reclassification panel with Reclassify by Value selected, buttons Equal Intervals with a count of 5, List Unique Values, Clear and Load Template, and a grid of Original Value and New Value rows with color swatches; at the bottom the Output Table path and the Save Remap Table and Close buttons — Land cover, scored by value: one row per class. The colored swatches beside the rows match the tinted bands in the histogram, so each bar shows which score its class received.

The controls

Select Raster lists the single-band raster layers in the active map; Browse... reaches any raster on disk or in a geodatabase instead. The blue ? opens this page.
Distribution draws the raster's values: one bar per value when the raster has few distinct values, a binned histogram with a smoothed density curve when it is continuous. Translucent washes over the histogram show which input values the remap rows cover so far, tinted by the score they map to, so gaps and overlaps are visible before you save. The box beneath gives the minimum, maximum, mean, standard deviation, the number of data cells and the number of NoData cells, and notes when an existing remap table for this raster was found and loaded.
Reclassify by Range and Reclassify by Value set the shape of the table. By value, each row is one exact input value and its score: the mode for categorical rasters such as land cover or topographic position. By range, each row is a From–To span and its score: the mode for continuous rasters such as elevation or distance from roads.
Equal Intervals replaces the rows with equally wide From–To ranges from the raster's minimum to its maximum, as many as the count in the box, with the scores left blank for you to fill in.
List Unique Values switches to by-value scoring and lists every distinct value in the raster, one row each, again with blank scores. It is enabled for integer rasters with a modest number of distinct values.
Clear empties the grid.
Load Template fills the grid from an existing remap table or ASCII remap file, typically one made earlier for a similar raster or supplied by a species expert, such as the species text files in the tutorial data. Adjust any row you disagree with, then save under this raster's own output name.
The grid is where the scores go: type a New Value from 0 (non-habitat) to 100 (best) in each row, and add or remove rows as needed. A value that falls on a boundary shared by two ranges goes to the earlier row; the first match wins.
Output Table is the path the table will be written to. It defaults to a name beside the source raster, and the note beneath it says which format that path will produce.
Save Remap Table writes the table; Close dismisses the window.

Continuous rasters

A continuous raster such as elevation is scored by range, and the window changes with it. The histogram becomes a binned distribution with a smoothed density curve, and the grid gains a third column: every row has a From value, a To value and the New Value that all cells in that span receive. Clicking Equal Intervals with 5 in the box splits the 667 to 2,877 m range of this DEM into five equal spans and leaves the scores blank, as in the figure; a species expert's breakpoints rarely fall at equal intervals, so the usual next step is to edit the From and To values to the expert's own thresholds before typing the scores. The colored washes over the histogram show the five spans at once.

The Create Reclass Tables window for the Elevation raster: the Distribution panel shows a binned histogram of elevation from 667 to 2,877 meters with a smoothed density curve and five colored bands across it; statistics minimum 667, maximum 2,877, mean 1,209.4, standard deviation 226.9, 6,360,765 data cells and 71,780 NoData cells; on the right Reclassify by Range is selected and the grid has three columns, From, To and New Value, with five equal-interval rows 667 to 1109, 1109 to 1551, 1551 to 1993, 1993 to 2435 and 2435 to 2877, the New Value column still empty; the Output Table note says the table will be written with FromValue, ToValue and NewValue fields — Elevation, scored by range: five equal intervals laid out by the button, scores still to be entered. Ranges must cover every value in the analysis area, the reason the tutorial's elevation template runs to 4,000 m and its distance template to 15,000 m.

The saved tables

Saved into a geodatabase, a by-value table has two fields, OriginalValue and NewValue, and a by-range table three, FromValue, ToValue and NewValue. These are the field names that Create Habitat Suitability Model recognizes.

Four geodatabase tables open in ArcGIS Pro: two range tables (distance from roads and elevation) with FromValue, ToValue and NewValue fields, and two value tables (topographic position and land cover) with OriginalValue and NewValue fields — The four remap tables of the tutorial in the project geodatabase: distance from roads and elevation by range, with three fields; topographic position and land cover by value, with two.

What the modeling tools require of a remap table

Create Habitat Suitability Model reads remap tables of either kind, and it is strict about their form. The rules below are the ones the original CorridorDesigner documented for its text files (the workshop book's tutorial section on the species factor reclassification files: pages 90 and 91 of the 2007 edition, pages 88 and 89 of the 2026 ArcGIS Pro edition), carried over to the geodatabase tables this window writes. This HSM Remap tool guarantees all rules are followed; they matter when you build or edit a table by hand.

Geodatabase tables.

A by-range table must have fields named FromValue, ToValue and NewValue; a by-value table, OriginalValue and NewValue. Field names are matched without regard to case, and any other fields are ignored.
NewValue is the suitability score, 0 to 100, with 100 the best habitat and 0 absolute non-habitat.
A range whose To is less than its From is refused. Rows with an empty value in any of the required fields are skipped.
Row order does not matter: the tool sorts the rows by value before it reclassifies.

Two geodatabase remap tables open in ArcGIS Pro: topo_clip_reclass, a by-value table with OriginalValue and NewValue fields and four rows scoring topographic position classes 1 to 4 as 78, 44, 78 and 67; and dem_m_clip_reclass, a by-range table with FromValue, ToValue and NewValue fields and five rows from 0 to 4,000 meters scoring 22, 44, 100, 89 and 67 — The two kinds of geodatabase remap table: by value (topographic position, OriginalValue and NewValue) and by range (elevation, FromValue, ToValue and NewValue).

ASCII remap files, the original CorridorDesigner format, which the tool still reads unchanged, so the species files that came with the original toolkit drop straight in.

One rule per line: a single value, a colon and its score (12 : 78), or a From value, a To value, a colon and the score (100 500 : 67). Values are separated by tabs or spaces.
Lines must run in ascending numerical order. The workshop book's own words: “all values must go in ascending numerical order (e.g. 1,2,3,4,5, NOT 1,3,2,5,4). The tool will fail if all values are not in ascending numerical order.” This tool checks the order and stops with a message naming the line.
Blank lines and lines beginning with # are ignored, so a file can carry comments.

Two ASCII remap files open in Notepad: blackbear_topo.txt with four lines, each a value, a colon and a score (1 : 78, 2 : 44, 3 : 78, 4 : 67); and blackbear_elev_m.txt with five lines, each a from value, a to value, a colon and a score (0 762 : 22, 762 1219 : 44, 1219 1981 : 100, 1981 2591 : 89, 2591 4000 : 67) — The same two reclassifications as ASCII files, from the tutorial's black bear species folder: one value per line for topographic position, a from and to value per line for elevation, the colon and score after each.

Both kinds.

The ranges must cover every value that occurs in the analysis area. Again from the workshop book: if there are 3,000 m mountains in the area, provide a score up to 3,000 m; if there are cells 30,000 m from a road, make the last range reach 30,000 m. A cell whose value matches no row becomes NoData in the suitability model, and the tool reports how many such cells there were.
A value on a boundary shared by two ranges takes the score of the earlier row: the first match wins.
One table scores one factor raster. The model tool takes one table per factor, with the factor's weight beside it.

Recommended citation

Jenness, J., D. Majka and P. Beier. 2026. Create HSM Remap Table. Wildlife and Forestry Tools add-in for ArcGIS Pro, v. 1.99 (September 2026). Jenness Enterprises. Available at: https://github.com/JeffJenness/Wildlife_Tools.

Credits and references

By Jeff Jenness, Jenness Enterprises (www.jennessent.com), for the CorridorDesigner tools by Jenness, Majka and Beier.

Beier, P., D. Majka, and J. Jenness. 2007, revised 2026. Designing wildlife corridors with ArcGIS: ArcGIS Pro edition. Workshop book, revised by J. Jenness for the Corridor Designer Tools of the Wildlife and Forestry Tools add-in. Available at: CorridorDesigner_WorkshopBook_2026_ArcGISPro.pdf (5 MB)
Beier, P., D. Majka, and J. Jenness. 2007. Designing wildlife corridors with ArcGIS. Workshop book, Northern Arizona University. Available at: corridordesign.org (archived copy at the Internet Archive)

Licensing information

Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level (Basic, Standard, Advanced). No extension licenses are required.

Create Habitat Suitability Model — consumes these tables.
Corridor Design Tutorial — Step 4 is this window, with the black bear scores.

Create HSM Remap Table

Summary

What it writes

A tour of the window

The controls

Continuous rasters

The saved tables

What the modeling tools require of a remap table

Recommended citation

Credits and references

Licensing information

Related tools and pages