11 replies to this topic

[David25]

Hi again,

Can anyone recommend where to find free downloadable shapefiles for Africa's National Parks, specifically for Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. I've tried looking in so many places!

Thanks,

Dave, SAIT Student, Calgary, AB.

[evion]

Hi again,

Can anyone recommend where to find free downloadable shapefiles for Africa's National Parks, specifically for Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. I've tried looking in so many places!

Thanks,

Dave, SAIT Student, Calgary, AB.

You can try this http://www.wdpa.org/ its the world database protected areas from UN you have to sign up and agree to certain conditions of use especially request permission if for commercial use, otherwise there is no problem, you can also download the kml and convert them to shapefiles

Edited by evion, 28 August 2009 - 10:21 PM.

[David25]

Hi,

Thanks for that site, it has everything I need. But, when I select what I want to download, then choose to save the zip file of shapefiles, why don't the shapefiles show in ArcCatalog? All I get is the WDPA logo and nothing else. Any idea why this is? Choosing KML doesn't work either, except when you click on a certain national park or whatever and choose to open it up directly. It's like the shapefiles don't exist.

[evion]

Hi,

Thanks for that site, it has everything I need. But, when I select what I want to download, then choose to save the zip file of shapefiles, why don't the shapefiles show in ArcCatalog? All I get is the WDPA logo and nothing else. Any idea why this is? Choosing KML doesn't work either, except when you click on a certain national park or whatever and choose to open it up directly. It's like the shapefiles don't exist.

I have downloaded the data for my country without trouble and seen it on arcmap even in kml, perhaps the zip file got corrupted during transmission, if you have a low bandwith connection that may be the reason try again or write a mail to the administrator they reply quickly.

[David25]

Hi,

Thanks for the help but it still doesn't work. No reply from the admin either. It's strange, two shps download but don't show anything. Not sure what I'm doing wrong but I'll keep trying I suppose!

[frax]

so you have extracted ALL the files from the zip-archive? so that they are available as normal files? You know you can browse a zip-archive in the file explorer, but there is one more step before they are accessible to Arc - you need to extract them. Also - keep in mind that a "shapefile" is a collection of a file (an arcane model) where you need all the files of the same name (with different extensions) - they represents the attributes, the indexes and the projection information - among other things.

[David25]

so you have extracted ALL the files from the zip-archive? so that they are available as normal files? You know you can browse a zip-archive in the file explorer, but there is one more step before they are accessible to Arc - you need to extract them. Also - keep in mind that a "shapefile" is a collection of a file (an arcane model) where you need all the files of the same name (with different extensions) - they represents the attributes, the indexes and the projection information - among other things.

Hi,

Yeah I've done it right as far as I know. The same procedure as I usually do. I use PKZip to unzip and I get about 15/16 files in total with the normal shx, shp, dbf etc. When viewed in ArcCatalog I do have two shapefiles.......but really there's nothing there when I preview them. One is a point and one is polygon.

[DaveB]

When you look at them in ArcCatalog does it show any records in table view?

[David25]

When you look at them in ArcCatalog does it show any records in table view?

No it doesn't. All completely grey and nothing there. I can't understand how I've downloaded them, unzipped correctly but still nothing.

[evion]

When you look at them in ArcCatalog does it show any records in table view?

No it doesn't. All completely grey and nothing there. I can't understand how I've downloaded them, unzipped correctly but still nothing.

Are you behind a firewall? or anything that can block the transamission i have downloaded a few Kenya parks shapefiles and everything is alright

Attached Files

•  Kenya_NP.PNG   966.26K   24 downloads

Edited by evion, 06 September 2009 - 05:52 AM.

[David25]

When you look at them in ArcCatalog does it show any records in table view?

No it doesn't. All completely grey and nothing there. I can't understand how I've downloaded them, unzipped correctly but still nothing.

Are you behind a firewall? or anything that can block the transamission i have downloaded a few Kenya parks shapefiles and everything is alright

No, nothing that should stop it. The administrator never wrote back either. I have no idea what is happening. Any more ideas?? Haha. Very strange.

[David25]

Ok, problem solved........kind of. I still cannot get any protected areas to open up in Arc when they are per country so I resorted to downloading global protected areas from the 2009 Annual Release (all 377MB) of it. Now I have every single protected area in the world and will just query the ones that I want which is only for about 5/6 African countries. Talk about a long way round but I have what I want now at least. Now time to find some African river line data that actually has lines joined up properly!!

Thanks everyone for your help.

Dave.