Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

By : Joel Lawhead
Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

By: Joel Lawhead

Overview of this book

Geospatial Analysis is used in almost every field you can think of from medicine, to defense, to farming. This book will guide you gently into this exciting and complex field. It walks you through the building blocks of geospatial analysis and how to apply them to influence decision making using the latest Python software. Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python, 2nd Edition uses the expressive and powerful Python 3 programming language to guide you through geographic information systems, remote sensing, topography, and more, while providing a framework for you to approach geospatial analysis effectively, but on your own terms. We start by giving you a little background on the field, and a survey of the techniques and technology used. We then split the field into its component specialty areas: GIS, remote sensing, elevation data, advanced modeling, and real-time data. This book will teach you everything you need to know about, Geospatial Analysis from using a particular software package or API to using generic algorithms that can be applied. This book focuses on pure Python whenever possible to minimize compiling platform-dependent binaries, so that you don’t become bogged down in just getting ready to do analysis. This book will round out your technical library through handy recipes that will give you a good understanding of a field that supplements many a modern day human endeavors.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating a Normalized Difference Vegetative Index


Our first example will be a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index or NDVI. NDVIs are used to show the relative health of plants in an area of interest. An NDVI algorithm uses satellite or aerial imagery to show relative health by highlighting chlorophyll density in plants. NDVIs use only the red and near-infrared bands. Take a look at the following formula for this:

NDVI = (Infrared – Red) / (Infrared + Red)

The goal of this analysis is to begin with a multispectral image containing those two bands and end up with a pseudo-color image using seven classes that color the healthier plants darker green, less healthy plants lighter green, and bare soil brown.

Because the health index is relative, it is important to localize the area of interest. You could perform a relative index for the entire globe, but vast areas like the Sahara Desert on the low-vegetation extreme and densely forested areas like the Amazon jungle skew the results for vegetation...