GIS Final Exam Flashcards
What does a raster model do?
It uses an array of values in cells/pixels representing squares on the ground
What does the cell value correspond to?
the characteristic of the spatial phenomenon at the cell location
What is raster data BEST suited for representing?
Continuous Phenomena
What is a corner cell assigned with:
X-Y Coordinate pairs.
What do columns represent in GIS
X coordinate
What do rows represent in GIS
Y coordinate
What does cell size determine?
The resolution of a raster
What does it mean if the cell size is smaller?
The resolution is higher
What is required if the cell size is smaller and the resolution is higher?
More cells are required to cover the same area, requiring a larger file size
What does each cell contain?
ONE numeric value (like integers or floating points)
What do numeric values found in cells correspond to?
One specific characteristic or spatial phenomenon
What are the advantages of raster?
-provides a simple data model
-makes for easy data collection
-is better at analyzing certain types of data
-often has faster analysis than vectors
-imagery is desirable for certain maps
What are the 3 types of raster data
Thematic, images, and indexed color raster
What is continuous raster?
Presents quantities/variables that change over the earth’s surface (precipitation, elevation, population density, temperature etc.). This means that neighboring cells often have different values to show continuous change over space.
What does a discrete raster do?
Stores vector type features in a raster format. This means that neighboring cells usually have the same values, but they can change suddenly at the borders.
What format are cell values usually in in a discrete raster?
Integer
What is an image raster?
A raster that stores reflectance of electromagnetic radiation from earth’s surface as its values.
What is a raster pyramid and why is it needed?
They are a way for a raster to speed its display. It takes little time and increases the storage size by about 50%.
What is raster resampling?
The process of recalculating and assigning the cell size/orientation of a raster.
What is block resampling?
Category values (majority, central cell), numeric values (average, medium, minimum),
in GENERAL RESAMPLING, what is the nearest neighbor method?
uses the value from the original cell falling at the center of the new one
in GENERAL RESAMPLING, what is the area-weighted average
area-based averaging of the involved
original cells
in GENERAL RESAMPLING, what is the bilinear interpolation
distance based averaging of the 4 nearest original cells
in GENERAL RESAMPLING, what is the cubic convolution?
weighted avg of the 16 nearest original cells.
What are the 2 parts of the raster file:
Header and Number array
What is the header in the raster file?
provides the information about the file, such
as the number of rows and columns, coordinate system
What method is used to reduce raster storage size?
Compression
In raster compression, what is the lossless method?
Includes run-length encoding and quad trees.
What does the run-length method of the lossless method do?
stores the number of cells and the cell value of each run?
What does the quad tree method of the lossless method do?
divides the area, step by step, into quadrants until it becomes homogenous with each quadrant. See the spatial indexing system on the first file.
What is implicitly stored in a raster?
Location information
How many times should projecting raster be done, and why?
As few times as possible. It takes more memory and may introduce artifacts.
How is a georeferencing raster done?
-Scanned maps have a cs in pixels and must be georeferenced
-Users identify pairs of ground control points visible in the raster and in a reference dataset
-a transformation then calculates the real world coordinates from the control point pairs and applies it to the raster.
In georeferencing, what is an affine transformation?
Linear transformation involving translation, rotation, scaling, and shearing
What is the MINIMUM number of points that affine transformation requires?
three
In georeferencing, what is a second/third order polynomial?
-It allows stretch or contact
-Additional points are needed