DEVELOPING OF GIS DATASET FOR CONSERVATION OF THE OHRID LAKE WATERSHED AREA

Abstract

Lake Ohrid has 87.5 km of shoreline and covers an area of 358.2 km², with the average depth of the lake 164m. 
It has a maximum depth of 289m. The watershed of Lake Ohrid includes steep mountains, as well as both Big 
and Small Prespa Lakes.  
In 1980, UNESCO declared the Lake Ohrid as a “site of cultural and natural values of the global patrimony.” In 
1994, the World Bank, in cooperation with the Republics of Albania and Macedonia, began preparation for a 
Global Environment Facility (GEF) grant to fund the incremental costs of a Lake Ohrid Conservation Project. 
On year 2004, during the project for preparing of topographic maps, the need for creating a new database for 
management and conservation of the lake Ohrid watershed area has been detected. One of the aims of project 
was the contribution in the next phases of Lake Ohrid Conservation Project (LOCP), i.e. to be a bridge between 
the current and future project phases in terms of GIS database development.    
The developed GeoDatabase (EGIS_OHRID.mdb), is organized in 6 datasets, i.e. Basemaps, Drainage, 
Hydrography, EnvBack, EnvMonitor, and Thematic data, which contains several feature classes.  
The outputs from the project are Ohrid basin environmental conservation database, Land use database, 
specification and new cartographic key. Due to the international mean of the database, it was developed in two 
languages, i.e. Macedonian language for local and English for international use were utilized.