1. WOCAT Mapping methodology
GIS: map production
WOCAT Secretariat, Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern

2. WOCAT QM
GIS: map production

3. Preparation of the data in Excel
Open the data in Excel or any other program (Stata) and eliminate all unnecessary fields
Make sure that the data has headers, One header should be named ‘Mapping_unit_id’ and contain the Mapping Units IDs. This column is also available in the shapefile where the data will be joined to. It is the key field.
Make sure all text data in excel is text data and all numerical data in excel are saved as numerical data (Format Fields in Excel)
Make sure there are no graphs, figures etc. in the sheet as ArcGIS cannot handle these.
Save the excel file as .csv or .txt (e.g. QM_LD.txt ) Then, the data is joined onto an existing shapefile in ArcGIS:

4. Preparation of the data in GIS
Load the text file into the GIS.
Load the shapefile “mapping unit” into the table of contents and right click on it.
3. Click ‘Open Attribute Table’
4. Click the white ‘Table Options’ button at the top left corner of the table and select ‘Join and Relates’ >‘Join’

5. Cont’
5. In the ‘Join Data’ window select the Key Fields as the field where the join will be based on. Our Key-Field is “mapunit” which contains all Mapping Units IDs.
6. To the shapefile, we want to join our txt file. Select the text file and the field corresponding to our key field.
7. As join option, choose ‘Keep all records’

6. 8. ‘Validate Join’ to check if there are invalid fields and to see if all Mapping unit IDs match.

7. 9. The data now is joined together BUT only on the fly
9. The data now is joined together BUT only on the fly. If you want to keep the joined data also after closing the ArcGIS program, you must export the data.

8. Exporting Data
Right click on the shapefile, to open the context window
Scroll down to ‘Data’ > ‘Export Data’. This opens the ‘Export Data’ window.
Within this window choose to export ‘All features’ and use the same coordinate system as the ‘layers source data’.
Save the file in your desired folder and give it a meaningful name.
5. Click ‘Ok’ and you will then be asked if you wish to add the exported data to the map as a layer. If you choose ‘yes’, the joined data will appear in the map as a new layer.

9. Elements of a map