L
Legacy 335715
Guest
Hi all,
I have just entered into the 5th year of a predator trapping project. All prior work is quite a mess, and massive.
The project began with ~ 100 traps in a valley, each one given a numerical name. At random intervals, additional traps have been set up in this valley, also given numerical names, to now total over 700 traps. Every 10-50 days (#days not important) someone would walk to each trap and record "0" or "1" depending on presence/absence of a predator.
The data is split into several different tabs within excel according to geographic "area" (this designation is also not very important). Columns are sorted into date, location name, predator type, trap type, etc. and rows are ascending trap name (numerical).
My dilemma: I need to attach the GPS coordinates to each trap location. This is difficult because:
- New rows have been copied/pasted for each time someone has walked the line of traps, only separating each trap check by a blank line (leading to 10,000+ rows of data per tab)
- New traps added to each area have been inserted essentially randomly into the data (ex: a check in june/2010 has 27 traps and their captures listed, and a check in april/2014 has 85 traps and their captures)
- I am left with rows upon rows of repeated data without an associated GPS point for each trap location
- I have the GPS points of all ~700 final locations, sorted by geographic area, but this is not linked/connected in any way to the locations that are actually associated with the data about captures.
- I need to be able to show the rates of capture per trap on a map using QGIS
Is there a way to take the Location name and coordinates from one file, and link those with the Location name and trapping data from another file without having to line everything up within the original data set (which would require hours upon hours of work)?
I have just entered into the 5th year of a predator trapping project. All prior work is quite a mess, and massive.
The project began with ~ 100 traps in a valley, each one given a numerical name. At random intervals, additional traps have been set up in this valley, also given numerical names, to now total over 700 traps. Every 10-50 days (#days not important) someone would walk to each trap and record "0" or "1" depending on presence/absence of a predator.
The data is split into several different tabs within excel according to geographic "area" (this designation is also not very important). Columns are sorted into date, location name, predator type, trap type, etc. and rows are ascending trap name (numerical).
My dilemma: I need to attach the GPS coordinates to each trap location. This is difficult because:
- New rows have been copied/pasted for each time someone has walked the line of traps, only separating each trap check by a blank line (leading to 10,000+ rows of data per tab)
- New traps added to each area have been inserted essentially randomly into the data (ex: a check in june/2010 has 27 traps and their captures listed, and a check in april/2014 has 85 traps and their captures)
- I am left with rows upon rows of repeated data without an associated GPS point for each trap location
- I have the GPS points of all ~700 final locations, sorted by geographic area, but this is not linked/connected in any way to the locations that are actually associated with the data about captures.
- I need to be able to show the rates of capture per trap on a map using QGIS
Is there a way to take the Location name and coordinates from one file, and link those with the Location name and trapping data from another file without having to line everything up within the original data set (which would require hours upon hours of work)?
