This study was conducted for the Northern River Basins Study (NRBS) to develop a database of all reports pertaining to fisheries and fish habitat in the NRBS Study Area. This area encompasses the Peace, Slave and the Athabasca rivers and all their tributaries.
We collected over 1500 reports for this study. For each report, we have recorded bibliographic information including keywords and a short abstract, biological information on species, lifestage, habitat, and collection methods, and geographic information on waterbody, watershed and location in UTM coordinates.
The use of UTM coordinates increases the functionality of this database. Users can query for all the records within a user-specified distance of any UTM coordinate. For example, a user may ask for all records within 30 km of Fort McMurray.
As part of this project, we developed a simple menu-driven database interface that runs in dBase IV. The interface allows users to edit, input new records, query the database by filling out a form, and print in an easy to use system. The user is insulated from learning complex dBase IV commands by a simple menu system. All menu selections have a prompt at the bottom of the screen to guide the user.
The primary deliverables of this project are a large bibliographic database and a dBase IV application to allow users to easily and quickly access the data. It should prove to be a valuable tool.