GIS Training with QGIS - Exercise 3: Adding External data

1. Using Openoffice.org Calc to create a table of capture data
 a) Create the following columns: Trap_ID, Date, Captures, FTD.
 b) Enter trap numbers from 10-30 for three different dates in December.
• Enter random values for capture data.
• Calculate Flies/Trap/Day (FTD) as captures/14  (each trap is checked once every two
weeks)
• You should have 60 rows of data, 20 rows for each date.
 c) Use “Data Pilot” (or “Pivot Table” in Excel) to create a new table (in a new sheet)
• Trap_ID in the first column, and dates in each successive column and FTD data in the
table.
• This new table will have 4 columns (TrapID, and three columns for the three dates) and
20 rows, one for each Trap_ID.
 d) Enter a new set of column headers in the top row:
• Trap_ID in the first column, and for the date columns enter:“FTD_ddmm” (where
dd=day, mm=month)
• Remove the original column header from the pivot table
 e) Export the new table to a dbf format file (in Geodata\Exercises directory). Name the
dbf file trap_data.dbf.
 2. Merge data into a shapefile
 a) Start a new QGIS project and load the traps shapefile from Geodata\fruitfly.
 b) Use the Tool plugin: Vector-> Data Management->Join Attribute data to attach
the above dbf file to the traps GIS layer. The column “Trap_ID” from the trap_data dbf
file will connect to the Trap_ID column in the traps layer. Name the new shapefile
traps_ftd.shp
 c) Open the attribute table of traps_ftd and verify that the attribute columns of FTD data are
available for all dates.
 d) Display the traps_ftd layer with “Graduated symbol” so that higher FTD values display as
larger circles. Choose to classify into 5 categories, and switch between each of the date
columns to display FTD for each date.
 e) When you find a suitable symbology for the FTD data, save as a QGIS style file. Name the
file standard_ftd_style.qml