Multiple Spatial joins

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04-04-2012 07:27 AM
ClaireParsons
New Contributor
I feel a bit embarrassed at asking this question and hope that i am not missing a really easy command to do this!!

I have some parish boundaries and also some environmental datasets - I'd like to perform a spatial join to identify whether the parish falls in one of the environmental datasets.
I don't really want to perform 10 spatial joins (the number of environmental datasets I have) is there another way?

thanks
Claire
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2 Replies
DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor
I'm not sure of a one-tool solution, but you can Merge the environmental datasets, then Identity (or Intersect) to find areas of overlap. I'm not sure if it would be lazy or ambitious or just silly, but you could also Union everything together and query through the mess of attributes it spits out.
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ClaireParsons
New Contributor
Tried a Union but it was a mess!!!
I might try your suggestion of merging the environmental datasets then intersecting probably the best solution.

I'm wondering whether try write a script that iterates through the layers in the TOC performing the spatial join - then merge together and dissolve on parish ID - might work. 
then again, it might be less time consuming to go with the first suggestion!!!

Thanks
Claire
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