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Tool Reference › Corridor Designer Tools › Land Facet Density

Land Facet Density

Corridor Designer Tools · Land Facet Corridor Modeling · geoprocessing tool · by Jeff Jenness
Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level

Summary

For every land facet in a land facet raster, computes the proportion of the surrounding neighborhood composed of that facet, from 0 to 1. If half the cells around a location belong to Facet X, the density of Facet X there is 0.5. The output is one multi-band raster with a band per facet, computed in a single pass — a 12-facet analysis produces one 12-band raster in one run. Part of the Land Facet Corridor Designer family; no Spatial Analyst needed.

Learn more About Land Facet Corridors covers why a corridor for each facet is built on density rather than on the facet cells themselves. Step 3 of the Land Facet Tutorial runs this tool on the clustered facets, with the tutorial data (41 MB) available to download so you can follow along.

Why density matters

A cell holds exactly one facet, but a corridor needs more than isolated cells of the right type — it needs places where the facet is genuinely abundant. Density measures that abundance, and Brost and Beier use it twice: the highest-density regions inside each Wildland Block become the corridor termini (Identify Termini Polygons reads the bands and their facet labels directly), and density joins the continuous variables in the Mahalanobis cost surface — where its ideal value is pinned at 100% rather than its mean, so the cheapest ground is ground thoroughly surrounded by its own facet.

The neighborhood machinery is the suite's full set: rectangle, circle, annulus, wedge, or a custom kernel file, with geodesic handling on geographic rasters, plus a denominator choice for how empty cells count.

A tour of the dialog

The example is Step 3 of the Land Facet Tutorial: the 18-facet raster from Land Facet Clustering, every facet included, a circular neighborhood.

The Corridor Designer Tools gallery open on the ribbon, with the Land Facet Density button, in the Land Facet Corridor Modeling row, outlined in blue
Where to find it: Land Facet Density is in the Land Facet Corridor Modeling row of the Corridor Designer Tools gallery, in the Corridor Designer Tools group of the Wildlife and Forestry tab.
The Land Facet Density geoprocessing pane: input land facet raster Land_Facet_Clusters, output multi-band density raster Land_Facet_Cluster_Density, land facets to include left empty for all, neighborhood Circle, units Cells, radius 3, and under Advanced the denominator set to Every neighborhood cell inside the raster (original rule)
The facet raster in, one multi-band raster out. Leave Land facets to include empty for all of them. The neighborhood is the suite's usual shape, units and size; here a 3-cell circle, 100 m on this grid, which is the radius the original work used. The Advanced denominator choice is explained below and is best left at the original rule.
Why the result looks strange on the map The output is one raster with a band per facet, and ArcGIS draws any raster with three or more bands as an RGB composite: band 1 in red, band 2 in green, band 3 in blue, and every other band ignored. So the map shows a glowing tangle of the first three facets on black and nothing of the other fifteen, resembling a black light poster in a college dorm room more than ecological data. Nothing is wrong with the data. To see one facet's density, open the layer's Symbology, switch from RGB to Stretch, and pick that facet's band; the band order follows the facet numbering in the clustering report, and the raster's metadata records it too.
The density raster as ArcGIS first draws it: an RGB composite of bands 1, 2 and 3 in red, green and blue on a black background, glowing blobs concentrated in the Santa Rita block with the wildland blocks outlined in yellow
The default RGB rendering: bands 1 to 3, the first three canyon-bottom facets, in red, green and blue, and the remaining fifteen bands invisible. Symbolize a single band with a stretch instead.

The tool holds the whole raster in memory at once, so the memory it needs grows with the number of cells. On most rasters that is no concern. On a very large one the tool may need more memory than your computer has free, and then one of two things happens: Windows starts using the disk as overflow memory and the tool slows to a crawl, or the tool stops with an out-of-memory error. There is no fixed limit; it depends on how much memory your computer has free. If a raster is too large, clip it to the area you need first.

ModelBuilder

A ModelBuilder diagram: Land_Facet_Clusters feeding Land Facet Density, producing Land_Facet_Clusters_Density
The facet raster in; the multi-band density raster out, ready for Identify Termini Polygons and Land Facet Mahalanobis.

Parameters

LabelExplanationData type
Input land facet rasterRequired · in_raster The single-band facet raster from Land Facet Clustering. Raster Layer
Output multi-band density rasterRequired · out_raster One band per facet, 0–1 proportions, facet labels recorded. Raster Dataset
Land facets to includeOptional · facets Restrict to chosen facets (default all). String
NeighborhoodRequired · neighborhood + shape parameters Rectangle, circle, annulus, wedge, or kernel file, with the matching size parameters and units; geodesic on geographic rasters. String + Doubles
DenominatorOptional · denominator How NoData neighbors count in the proportion. String

Python

import arcpy
arcpy.ImportToolbox(r"C:\path\to\JennessEnterprisesTools.pyt")  # your install path
arcpy.jenness.LandFacetDensity(
    in_raster=r"D:\lf.gdb\Land_Facets",
    out_raster=r"D:\lf.gdb\Facet_Density",
    neighborhood="Circle", radius=200, nbr_units="Map units")

Recommended citation

Jenness, J., B. Brost and P. Beier. 2026. Land Facet Density. 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), from the Land Facet Corridor Designer by Jenness, Brost and Beier.

Licensing information

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