Normalizing species count data in ArcGIS Pro

Question

I have presence points of a certain species all over the United States. I completed a spatial join between the US and said points. However, I am unsure of how to normalize the data. There is a "percent of total," but I am unsure if this is the appropriate option. Or is it as simple as just normalizing by the counts themselves?

Answer 1

It depends on what comparison you're trying to make with the normalized data.

If you want to look at the occurrence of that species by state, you could do a spatial join on a US States layer, then calculate a new field where the value is the species count for each state divided by the total area of the state. That would give you the normalized 'count per square mile' (or whatever unit you want).