Part Two

Looking at Tables

The soil sampling points have spatial data attached to them in the form of a Dbase file (like an Excel Spread Sheet). Each point has certain data related to it. To look at the data, make sure that “soilsamp.shp” is the active theme, if not, just click on it in the legend. Then go up to Theme and down to Tables, just like is shown below.

This will bring up the data that is associated with the soil sampling points. You will see this table contains numerous data for all of the sampling locations. The data contains values for sample number, GPS data for the locations in the field, soil Ph, Electrical Conductivity, % Organic Matter, Soil potassium and phosphorus levels, and plant biomass. You can do statistical analysis on the data in these tables. To do statistics on a certain column (field) just press the label button at the top of the column as shown below. Then on the menu bar, pull down the “Field” menu and select “statistics”. A window pops up with numerous statistical values for soil Ph. What is the average Ph of the samples in the field?? Standard Deviation??? Try this out for the other fields (Ec, Organic matter, Soil K, etc….)

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