ArcGIS Polygon Edge Length – Calculating Edge Length of Polygon Within Overlapping Polygon Using ArcGIS Desktop

arcgis-10.1arcgis-desktopoverlapping-featuresoverlaypolygon

I have a layer of wetland polygons and a layer of lakes. I basically want to find the total length of lake shoreline contained within each wetland and add these values as an attribute of the wetlands.

This image shows what I'm looking for in red:

enter image description here

The result would be the summed length of the red polylines as an attribute i.e.

WetlandID   ShorelineLength
55555       3.23mi   
34888       7.11mi

Best Answer

Here's an idea, based on using Feature To Line. With ESRI, the tool is only available at the ArcInfo/Advanced license level, but with QGIS I'm sure you can find an version of it. So you could, as I often do, supplement your ArcView/Basic license workflow with free QGIS tools.

  1. Run Feature To Line to convert the lake features to lines (make sure you're using projected coordinate system, it'll help later)
  2. Clip the new lines using the wetland polygon
  3. Make sure length is calculated in the new clipped feature class
  4. Use spatial join to attach the lengths of any lines that intersect each polygon
Related Question