Exercise 1: What is the spatial pattern of the ground cover vegetation within 100 m, 500 m and 1 km of 20 wetland sites?

To determine these spatial patterns I first imported the latitudinal and longitudinal locations of my wetland sites as a point layer by adding a csv file with this data from the catalog to my map and choosing the Display X, Y Data option after right clicking on the imported file.
Display X, Y Data: X= longitude
Y= latitude

I then created 3 buffers around each point using the Buffer tool in spatial analyst. The buffers created had a 100m radius, a 500m radius, and a 1km radius.
Buffer: Input vector= wetland site points
Buffer= 100 (then 500, then 1000)
Unit= Meters

I used Clip in raster processing to clip my raster layer to the extent of my largest buffer layer so that the computer did not have to process so much extra raster data moving forward.
Clip: Input= raster layers
Clip to= 1kmBufferLayer

Then I created an NDVI raster layer from Landsat data obtained by the USGS Earth Explorer. I downloaded and then imported data from 1995 and 2019. The LIDAR data from 2019 was collected via the LandSat 8 satellite which collects, among other things, Near Infra-Red (NIR) and red wavelength reflectance. NIR is categorized as Band 5 and Red as Band 4. To create an NDVI layer from this data I had to rescale the Band 5 and Band 4 raster layers because the USGS self-correcting algorithm overcorrected for atmospheric disturbances. To do this I used to Raster Calculator in spatial management. This resulted in 2 new raster layers within the acceptable range (0-1000) for Band 5 and Band 4 of the 2019 LIDAR data. I did not have to rescale the 1995 data because there was no self-correcting algorithm used in that data.
Raster Calculator: Query= [(grid – Min value from grid) * (Max scale value – Min scale
value) / (Max value from grid – Min value from grid)] + Min scale value

I used the Raster Calculator again to create the final NDVI layer for 1995 and one for 2019 using the NIR and red wavelength data layers. The 1995 data was collected via LandSat 4 which categorizes NIR wavelengths as Band 4 and red wavelengths as Band 3.
Raster Calculator: Query= ((“NIR_Layer”-“red_Layer”)/(“NIR_Layer” + “red_Layer”))

2019 NDVI result below

I then used the Raster to Point tool to turn both the 1995 NDVI and 2019 NDVI data into a polygon layer.

Raster to Point: NDVI layers to point

Finally, then I used the Clip in spatial analyst tool to clip the polygon NDVI layers to the buffer layers I created earlier.
Clip: Clip “NDVI layers” to “Buffer layers”

Now I have the land cover type (in the form of a number signifying vegetation density) information for all of my sites within all of my buffer zones.