9/12/2022

GEOG 204
LECTURE 2

House keeping stuff This week:

VECTOR and
RASTER Data

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The nature of geographic phenomena

• Temporal Variation

Time, t Time, t+1 Time, t+2

Parcel subdivision
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The nature of geographic phenomena

• Spatial Variation
• Tobler’s First Law of Geography: “everything is related to
everything else, but near things are more related than distant
things.”
• Implications for appropriate representation:
• Significance of spatial autocorrelation
• Proximity effects
• Geographic scale (level of detail)

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Soil pH Distribution
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Representing geographic space

• Two basic forms: Objects and Fields

• Objects are discrete and definite, such highways, parks,
municipalities…
• Fields are distributed continuously over a large area for example
temperature, rainfall, elevation…

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Representing geographic space

• The object view considers space to be populated by

distinguishable, discrete, and bounded entities.
• Objects have identity, boundaries or spatial extent and attributes
• Points, lines, polygons
• E.g. a representation of individual houses in a city suburb

• Uses the Vector Data Model

Representing geographic space

• A geographic field treats space as being populated by one

or more continuous phenomena. For every point in the
study area, a value can be determined.

• E.g. River depth can be determined anywhere on a bathymetric

map of the Netchako River
• Uses the Raster Data Model

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• Continuous field
• A value can be determined for
every point on the surface

• Discrete object
• The space between them is
potentially ‘empty’ or
undetermined

Vector data model

Three types of geometry

• Points:
• dimensionless (no width, length, or height)
• A pair of coordinates
• Lines:
• One dimension
• have length
• At least two coordinate pairs (vertices)
• Terms: Line, polyline, linestring
• Polygons:
• Two dimension Source: Wikimedia

• closed vertices
• Minimum vertices for a triangle?
• Terms: polygon, multipolygon
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Vector data model

Formats Other formats?

• Shapefile • GeoJSON
• Developed by ESRI as a data {
"type": "Feature",
interchange format "geometry": {
"type": "Point",
• Open specification, regulated by ESRI "coordinates": [-122.8155, 53.8922]
},
• A collection of multiple files
"properties": {
• shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj, … "name": “UNBC"
}
• A shapefile can represent one }
geometry type

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Raster data model

• Phenomena is continuous over a large area

• Regular tessellation of space
• Triangles, squares, hexagons

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Raster data model

Characteristics of raster data 13

Source: Lo and Yeung 2007. Concepts and technics of Geographic information Systems. Pearson Prentice Hall

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Raster data model

• Formats
• GeoTIFF
• ESRI Grid
• Pix

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Objects or
Fields?
It is not a debate

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• Spatial data
are grouped
by themes
• Layers

• The concept
of layering is
key in GIS
and
computer
aided design
(CAD)

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# of Layers: 1
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PG: 12

# of Layers: 2
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# of Layers: 3
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# of Layers: 4 (6)
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Layers out of order

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Properties of GIS data

➢ Spatial (x,y location)

= ‘where is it ?’

➢ Attributes (multiple)
= ‘what is it’ ?

➢ [Pattern]
= ‘how are they related’ ?
➢ Other questions?

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Location and Attributes

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Location and Attributes

x (easting), y (northing) [z-elevation] coordinates
e.g. latitude / longitude (degrees, minutes, seconds)

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Location and Attributes

Attribute data: allows us to ask the question … "what is it ?"
> Every layer has an associated table
> These are linked to spatial location by a code number
➢Attributes are stored in columns as items
➢Rows display the attributes for each feature = records
➢Entries may be text strings, integers, float (decimal) or dates
Item (Description)

Record
(place) ->

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Types of questions a GIS can answer – resulting from spatial

location, attributes and patterns

a. Location: WHAT exists here

"What is at this location ?" e.g. Dig safe?

b. Condition: WHERE are specific conditions

Where are all the pine dominated stands ?

c. Trends: WHAT HAS CHANGED (over time)

How far has the riverbank receded in the past 10 years ?

d. Patterns: HOW are features related

"How does proximity to salmon streams affect the number of bear attacks";

e. Modelling: WHAT IF ..?

What if the climate warmed by 2 degrees? (e.g. effect on habitats)

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Scale
• Map Scale: The ratio or relationship between a distance on
a map and the corresponding distance the ground.
• Map details depend on the scale of the data
• The larger the scale, the more the detail
• Large scale is synonymous with fine scale (fine granularity)
• The smaller the scale, the less the detail
• Small scale is synonymous with course scale (course granularity)
• With generalisation and simplification one can create a map with a
course grained scale from large scale data

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Usage of “Scale”
• Cartographic Scale
• 1:1000000 (1 cm = 10 km)
• Crucial in paper based maps
• Has importance in the digital medium
• Spatial Scale
• Resolution: the size of your pixel (raster)
• Extent: the size of your study area
• “small-scale” operation covers a small area
• “large-scale” operation covers a large area

• Scale Bar
• Provides a visual indication of the size and distance a map.
• Use appropriate (intuitive/simple) scale bar units
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Scale

• Note:
• Zooming in on a small scale map does not increase the quality of
the map

• Match the appropriate scale to the level of detail required in the

project or the scale of the date.

• A detailed map ≠ accurate map

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Scale

• Know the scale of your spatial data.

• Can you resolve what you want to see?
• Temporal scale – frequency for data collection
• Ecological scale – scale and spatial resolution should match the scale of
the ecological phenomena
• Caution when comparing analyses from maps/data of different scales
• Spatial data are intended for a specific scale or a range of scales

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Working with data

• Know the metadata:

• Metadata “is data about data”
• E.g. who collected it, for what purpose,
what does it show, when was it
collected, scale

• Clean data

• Appropriate file name and

folder structure

Presentation Title 31

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