From the “Inputs” list, select the “Designations” component

This component provides a selection of designation types as boolean datasets.

We will use the “Union” component to join some of these designations into a single class to be excluded from our candidate sites selection”

Connect the nodes as shown and rename the “Union” component to “Conserved habitats (exclude)” to indicate the new class.

Save and run the model to see a preview of this new class.

To exclude these locations from our candidate site selection we can use the “Complement” component before linking up to the final “Intersection” operation.

“Complement” simply creates a mirror image of the input, in this case selecting all the areas not contained in the new class.

Connecting the output from the “Complement” component to the “Intersection” component ensures that only candidate sites which do not intersect with the excluded areas will be selected.

Let’s see what effect this has on our final selection of candidate sites. Save and run the model one more time.

Now we can see that the final selection, as intended, excludes areas within conserved habitats.