Data Access
The inventory helped to determine what ecological flow models - that can predict both low and high flows - were in use or were applicable to the Marcellus Shale region and recommended suitable model(s) for instream flow predictions both dependent and independent of ecological/biological data. The deliverables for Phase 1 of this project included a report that assessed the availability of hydrologic and ecological flow models suitable for the Marcellus Shale region and a georeferenced summary of the adequacy of available ecological data to inform ecological flow model(s) for streams within the Marcellus Shale region. The georeferenced summary assessment is available as an Access database.
The database consists of five main tables. These tables include:
- tbl_datasets_marcellus: provides information on original dataset and states represented for each dataset
- tbl_originators_marcellus: provides information on data collecting agency and states represented for each originator
- tbl_fish_species_lookup_marcellus: provides unique ids (maris_fishspecies_id), common names and scientific names at family, genus and species level
- tbl_loc_info_marcellus: provides unique ids for collection sites (originator_station_id) and associated site information, including latitude and longitude, which can be used to link location information to fish collection information. Additional queries were run to create refined location tables
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- tbl_location_marcellus_state_stream_sites: all stream fish collection sites within states or ecoregions that overlap the Marcellus boundary
- tbl_location_marcellus_all_sites: all fish collection sites within the Marcellus boundary
- tbl_fish_info_marcellus: provides unique ids for each collection event (originator_sample_id) which can be used to link collection information (date, collection methods, effort, species, abundance) with site information.
Information from the last three tables (tbl_fish_species_lookup_marcellus, tbl_location_info_marcellus, tbl_fish_info_marcellus) can be combined based on unique ids and queried based on criteria in the tables (i.e. collection method, targeted sampling verses community sampling, etc.) to develop fish datasets for different analyses in the future.
In addition, two shapefiles have been created from the database. These shapefiles display the location of the sampling points. If a user wants to view the results of a sampling station, they will need to find the station using the shapefile and then refer to the results table. This process can be completed manually by looking up the information in Access or a join can be performed in ArcGIS to connect these tables so all of the information appears in one attribute table.
