Tools for visualizing landscape pattern for large geographic areas
- Analysas Corporation, Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
Landscape pattern can be modelled on a grid with polygons constructed from cells that share edges. Although this model only allows connections in four directions, programming is convenient because both coordinates and attributes take discrete integer values. A typical raster land-cover data set is a multimegabyte matrix of byte values derived by classification of images or gridding of maps. Each matrix may have thousands of raster polygons (patches), many of them islands inside other larger patches. These data sets have complex topology that can overwhelm vector geographic information systems. The goal is to develop tools to quantify change in the landscape structure in terms of the shape and spatial distribution of patches. Three milestones toward this goal are (1) creating polygon topology on a grid, (2) visualizing patches, and (3) analyzing shape and pattern. An efficient algorithm has been developed to locate patches, measure area and perimeter, and establish patch topology. A powerful visualization system with an extensible programming language is used to write procedures to display images and perform analysis.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-84OR21400
- OSTI ID:
- 10192407
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9309230-2; ON: DE94001121; TRN: 93:004049
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. international workshop in integrating geographic information systems and environmental modeling,Breckenridge, CO (United States),27-29 Sep 1993; Other Information: PBD: [1993]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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