Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value

Amarantine — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:09:22 GMT

Using ArcGIS Pro, latest version.

This happens when running the ESRI tutorial here, under the section "Calculate the percentage of deforested area near roads".

After performing the Pairwise Clip, the resulting area in shape_area is either the *total buffer area*(wrong value) or the *actual correct clipping area*. I've run the process several times and seem to get the right value more often than not, but sometimes I do get the total buffer area in the shape_Area field, which seems odd to me.

For simplicity, the data is available here, and the process is really to import the roads.shp and deforested_area.shp, make a selection on the roads.shp like this, apply a 5.5 Km buffer on the selection, and then perform a pairwise clip, with deforested_area as input and the roads_buffer as clipping features.

This is an image with both the right and the wrong output attribute tables. The shapefile "deforested_clip_v2" has the wrong Shape_Area value, and note that the area_test column was actually calculated using right click, then calculate geometry, area. On the right hand side, "Deforested_area_PairwiseClip1" has the right area value in Shape_Area.

Does anyone know why this happens?

Re: Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value

DanPatterson — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 01:19:13 GMT

are all the inputs in the same coordinate system? If not, get the inputs into one common coordinate system prior to buffering and clipping and comparing

Re: Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value

Amarantine — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:53:12 GMT

Wow, thank you so much for your help!

... Yes, they are in the same CRS ...

topic Re: Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value

Re: Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value

Re: Pairwise Clip products yielding wrong Shape_area value