Data handling in QGIS

Make sure to have QGIS already installed and running in your computer. You can do this from:

Download the software from: QGIS

Do the following (pay attention to the buttons and steps)

  1. Load the shapefile of Madagascar (“madagascar.shp”) as a vector later.
  2. Load the shapefile of Malagasy Protected Areas (from the WDPA: World Database on Protected Areas. https://www.protectedplanet.net/search?country=Madagascar&q=Madagascar) as a vector layer.
  3. Load the data table downloaded from GBIF (“Madagascar_tan_database_2.csv”, which was previously viewed and treated on a spreadsheet software like EXCEL) as a delimited text layer, comma-separated value table: ‘.csv’.
  4. Open the attribute table of the Malagasy protected areas shapefile’s (right-click on the shapefile and choose Open Attribute Table) and sort the fields/columns by “REP_AREA”" and the “IUCN_CAT”. This way, you have the largest parks and those within the main categories of the IUCN.
  5. Select the first park “Tsingy de Bemaraha” (both rows). You will repeat this for the second park “Tsaratanana” (steps 5-7)
  6. Select the points/localities that are within the park using the following sequence: Vector –> Geoprocessing tools –> Intersect and create a separate shapefile.
  7. Export the intersected data from the Attribute table of the shapefiles for each park (step 5)