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2. Training with the manual


The manual has two distinct parts or user skill levels. The first part presents the basics of GIS by providing a quick overview of the most important functions of ArcView and the Spatial Analyst extension. This part uses data from the fictitious country Pais Pesca[3]. This country was chosen so that the authors were able to develop exercises without giving information which is incorrect. If you want to know more about the specifics of the country, have a look at Annex A. If you have basic computer skills (2-5 years of PC experience, worked with Microsoft Excel) you should be able to complete at least:

a. GIS basics, pages 1-44,
b. application case studies, pages 94-132, and
c. how to proceed with your own GIS work, pages 133-144.

The second part is based on raster data and earlier publications, illustrating practical applications of GIS from going from global fisheries statistics, to floodplain fisheries monitoring, to hake fisheries in the Italian Tyrrhenian Sea.

2.1. Set up of the training and the manual

As mentioned before, this manual is a ‘do-it-yourself’ manual. The complete package consists of this manual and two CDs with exercises. For the use of the manual you need to have ArcView installed, and later on the Spatial Analyst extension. The system requirements for ArcView 3.3 are:

ArcView Spatial Analyst 2 requires ArcView 3.2 or higher and is supported on: Microsoft Windows, Windows XP(Home Edition and Professional), Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 95/98.

ArcView Spatial Analyst 1.x is supported on Microsoft Windows, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 95/98.

To install ArcView and the Spatial Analyst extension: put the ArcView installation CD in your PC and follow the instructions on your screen. After the installation of ArcView is complete you might be asked if you want to install Seagate Crystall reporting. This will take a lot of space on your hard disk, and for the exercises in the manual you do not need it, so press No. After you have installed ArcView, you should install the Spatial Analyst extension: put the installation CD of the Spatial Analyst extension in you PC and follow the instructions on your screen.

After successful installation of both ArcView and the Spatial Analyst extension, you can start with the course. Depending on the space available on your hard disk you could copy both exercise CDs onto your hard drive in one folder (for instance: /FAO_GIS/). If you do this, you have to make sure that the whole path is without spaces and long names, as ArcView has problems with these types of paths (do not copy the data into your ‘My Documents’ folder, as this folder’s path contains a lot of spaces which ArcView handles badly [see also the naming convention note on page 52]).

When your hard disk space is limited, leave all data on the CDs, and work from the CDs. This option will decrease the speed of operation of the PC. You may find that some exercises do not work in this way. If this is the case, copy the data you need onto your hard disk, and try again.

Pay special attention to the fact that when you copy files from a CD onto your hard disk, these files will have the properties as Archive and Read only. To be able to work with the files, you will need to change the properties of the files you use: open the Windows Explorer, right-click on the file(s) you copied and are going use, click properties, and look in the General tab under Attributes (at the bottom). All tick boxes need to be empty. If one of the boxes is ticked, untick it, so that the files can be edited.


[3] With kind permission of Resource Analysis, developers of Fishman
(http://www.netcoast.nl/coastlearn/website/planning/fishman.htm).

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