Human activity increases as population increases. The environment must be altered in response to the pressures increasing population creates. Altering the environment may pose a risk to the health of natural habitats. The health and quality of habitats promotes biodiversity in ecosystems. Biodiversity is necessary for a functioning ecosystem as species work synergistically to create a livable environment. It is therefore important to know how practices and events threaten these habitats and the species living in them. This work details how research is used to formulate a framework for identifying habitat threats in any given region, determine habitat suitability, assess habitat sensitivity to different threats, and ultimately model how the quality of habitats change under different land use/cover scenarios. A meta-analysis of how different authors define and characterize threat in various contexts was done. The results of this analysis aids in the process of threat mapping, regional analysis, and land development planning. Knowledge gained from this study was used to evaluate regions on a watershed level using a combination of GIS technology and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model with the goal of performing vulnerability analyses.