In terms of the difficulties encountered, we found that the first issue involves the issue of interoperability We quickly found, that in order to generate our end product (a fuzzy habitat quality criteria based upon several mapsheets, each with different data structures) we needed to work in three separate computing environments (ArcInfo7.x, ArcView 3.2, and IDRISI32. The ESRI line of GIS (ArcInfo/View) not only share the same development company, but are both vector-based, and thus, communication (importation / exportation) across programs was not problematic.

IDRISI, however, is raster-based, and required careful conversions. Regardless of the GIS employed, at least two and sometimes three separate file systems needed to be updated and manipulated frequently; this lead to excessive file sizes, with many individual files exceeding 50 megabytes. Even with compression constraints—so much so that we were forced to migrate to a separate network location at the university, and one further migration to two of the authors’ home computer networks. By the end of the analysis, each of the eight mapsheets analyzed, ballooned to approximately one gigabyte in size. Even with data compression, mobile media backup (CD-R backup, etc.), data logistics were difficult throughout.