Extracting raster values from polygon perimeters using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst?

Question

I am currently working on a project to identify local ponds or water bodies that have high probability of species occurrence. I'm using BioClim climate data, SSURGO soil data, and a DEM layer for a MaxEnt analysis. On top of that I have a global water presence layer from the EU Global Surface Water Explorer. My problem at this point is that the soil layers do not have data where water is present, even if they did I would think they would be moderately different from the outlying perimeter of the water bodies. At this point, the water bodies have been converted to a polygon layer, but I need to extract probability values from the MaxEnt output around the perimeter of these water bodies. I tried using a buffer style extraction, but I got an error that I didn't have enough memory. I could deal with that if necessary, but is there another way around this issue?

I do have the Spatial Analyst toolbox.

Answer 1

If you are wanting to extract the pixel values for a polygon boundary rather than the interior area, then you need to convert your polygons into polylines. You don't actually state what GIS system you are using so I shall assume you are using an Advanced licensed ArcGIS.

Use the feature to line to convert your polygons to polylines, then convert this to a raster using the polyline to raster tool. Finally extract by mask.

If you construct this as a model then add an iterator at the beginning you could easily loop through your water bodies at an individual level writing off zonal stats to tables.