[Qgis-user] how to select features in one vector file based on distance to features of another vector file?

[Steven Yanoff]

Hello,

In QGIS is there a way to select features in one vector file based on a specified distance to features in another vector file?  For example, to select locations of rare birds in a point shapefile within 10 km of nature preserves in a land use polygon shapefile?

This can be done by buffering features and then intersecting buffered features - for example by buffering bird location points 10km and intersecting the result with the land use shapefile, via QGIS Buffer and Select by Location vector tools.  But it is time consuming to run multiple tools.

Thanks,

Steven Yanoff
Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5