Report Cover Vol I - Clare County Library

The County Clare Wetlands Survey Patrick Crushell & Peter Foss 2008
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6 Compilation of the County Clare Wetland Survey GIS and
Database of Sites
6.1 Background and Project set-up
This County Clare Wetlands Survey was undertaken over a 3 month period from the end of July 2008.
The study was primarily a desk study not involving any field survey of sites or ground truthing of habitat
information.
Information on known and potential wetlands in County Clare; as well as key areas where wetlands might
be likely to occur was abstracted from a variety of existing third party GIS datasets, previous surveys of
particular wetland types, published and other research information sources, personal communication with
ecological practitioners and staff in Clare County Council and from a desk-based survey of colour aerial
photographs of the entire county.
The project depended on the co-operation and assistance of the many groups and individuals who
provided data to the project (see Appendix 2 for a list of all groups and individuals who were consulted).
The main challenge of this project was to abstract a list of sites containing one of the 34 wetland types
being recorded (see above) and obtain area information for the different wetland types present on the
sites recognised in County Clare.
As part of the CWS mapping project two main databases were created to hold site information.
The first was a CWS GIS dataset (created using ArcView 9.2 GIS software package and subsequently
converted for use with MapInfo) to hold site related information on each wetland site identified. The
dataset is in the form of an ESRI shapefile (point dataset) with numerous attributes containing data on
each site such as, area, designation (where relevant), habitats recorded etc.
The second was a CWS Site Database (Filemaker Pro 8.0 software database package supporting data
export to Excel format spreadsheets) which held the same information as in the GIS database, plus some
additional site specific data unsuitable for storing in GIS format. The site database allowed for easier
sorting of site records, data input of site information and subsequent data analysis.
Data from both of these databases was readily exported into an Excel spreadsheet which allowed data
exchange between the CWS GIS dataset and main CWS Site database, and accessibility to data for third
parties without the appropriate GIS or database software.
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