Open Source GIS
Monitoring Environmental Changes with GIS Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are powerful tools for monitoring environmental changes over time. By leveraging spatial data and analysis capabilities, GIS enables tracking of forest loss, changes in water quality, identification of pollution sources, mapping of air quality and emissions, and assessment of climate change impacts. Tracking Deforestation and Habitat…
Reliable and up-to-date basemaps are critical for providing geographical context in open source GIS applications. However, sourcing and maintaining basemaps that offer adequate coverage, accuracy, and current imagery can be challenging over the long term. Strategies for ensuring robust access to basemaps focus on assessing basemap provenance, mitigating decay risks, incorporating redundancy, planning seamless transitions,…
Choosing the Right Map Projection Selecting the appropriate map projection is a crucial first step when preparing to print a map. The projection determines how the curved surface of the Earth is represented on a flat plane, which can distort size, shape, distance, direction, and more. When printing, you’ll want a projection that accurately conveys…
Explaining GIS and Its Value Defining geographic information systems (GIS) A geographic information system (GIS) is a framework for gathering, managing, analyzing, and presenting all types of geographical data. GIS integrates hardware, software, and data to capture, manage, analyze, and display information related to the surface of the Earth. This includes data on locations, boundaries,…
Reading in Raster and Vector Files The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) provides capabilities for working with both raster and vector spatial data formats in Python. To read a raster dataset into a Python script, the gdal.Open() function can be used, which takes the filesystem path of the raster file and returns a gdal.Dataset object…
Expanding Access to Location Intelligence Geographic information systems (GIS) technology was previously only accessible to governments, research institutions, and large corporations due to the high costs of proprietary software and hardware required. Recent advances in open source GIS software, cloud-based mapping platforms, and low-cost mobile mapping solutions are removing traditional barriers to entry and enabling…
