Book Image

Learning QGIS - Third Edition

By : Anita Graser
Book Image

Learning QGIS - Third Edition

By: Anita Graser

Overview of this book

QGIS is a user-friendly open source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows. The popularity of open source geographic information systems and QGIS in particular has been growing rapidly over the last few years. Learning QGIS Third Edition is a practical, hands-on guide updated for QGIS 2.14 that provides you with clear, step-by-step exercises to help you apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. Through clear, practical exercises, this book will introduce you to working with QGIS quickly and painlessly. This book takes you from installing and configuring QGIS to handling spatial data to creating great maps. You will learn how to load and visualize existing spatial data and create data from scratch. You will get to know important plugins, perform common geoprocessing and spatial analysis tasks and automate them with Processing. We will cover how to achieve great cartographic output and print maps. Finally, you will learn how to extend QGIS using Python and even create your own plugin.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Learning QGIS Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Combining raster and vector data


Some analyses require a combination of raster and vector data. In the following exercises, we will use both raster and vector datasets to explain how to convert between these different data types, how to access layer and zonal statistics, and finally how to create a raster heatmap from points.

Converting between rasters and vectors

Tools for converting between raster and vector formats can be accessed by going to Raster | Conversion. These tools are called Rasterize (Vector to raster) and Polygonize (Raster to vector). Like the raster clipper tool that we used before, these tools are also based on GDAL and display the command at the bottom of the dialog.

Polygonize converts a raster into a polygon layer. Depending on the size of the raster, the conversion can take some time. When the process is finished, QGIS will notify us with a popup. For a quick test, we can, for example, convert the reclassified landcover raster to polygons. The resulting vector polygon...