Distance to habitat — Recipe (QGIS)
Tool-bound implementation of the Distance to habitat (Task) Task Schema in QGIS 4.2. Worked example: Habitat network at Ledreborg (Example).
Data you need
| Role | Form | Level of measurement | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Habitat patches | polygons | — (presence) | e.g. from Nature content layer (Task), covering the study area plus a margin |
| Zones (optional) | polygons | nominal | for summaries, e.g. landscapes |
| Distance (output) | raster | ratio (metres) |
A projected CRS in metres (EPSG:25832 for Danish data).
Rasterize the habitat (Task Schema steps 2–3)
Rasterize (Tool - QGIS) on the patches:
- A fixed value to burn: 1; Pre-initialize the output image with value: 0
- Output raster size units: Georeferenced units; width and height = the chosen cell size
- Output extent: the study area plus its margin
- Additional command-line parameters:
-at(all touched), so features narrower than a cell are not lost
Compute distances (step 4)
Proximity (Tool - QGIS): A list of pixel values to use as target 1, Distance units Georeferenced coordinates, Output data type Float32.
Cut to the study area and summarise (steps 5–6)
- Clip raster by extent (Raster extraction) to the study area.
- Style it with Singleband pseudocolor, mode Discrete, with classes from the question (e.g. 50, 100, 200 m).
- Per zone: Dissolve the zones by their type field if several polygons share a type, then Zonal statistics (Tool - QGIS) with Mean and Max.
Checked in QGIS 4.2.2, October 2026.