Geospatial Analysis with Igor Pro
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| Global Topography and Bathymetry |
- Import common, non-proprietary data formats.
- Display data in 1D, 2D, and 3D graphs.
- Analyze data using built-in and custom operations, functions, and procedures.
Igor Pro includes a variety of custom and general tools for importing, displaying, and analyzing geospatial data.
With Igor Pro you can work with standard geospatial data formats such as a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) or a vector data set.
DEMs or raster data sets are arrays of gridded data points. These formats represent 2D surfaces such as land topography or undersea bathymetry.
Vector data sets represent spatial objects as a series of connected points. Such data consist of latitude-longitude pairs representing a geographic boundary, such as a shoreline, river, or political division.
If you need help finding data for your own particular needs and geographic areas, we have compiled short descriptions of and links to a variety of data resources freely available for download on the Internet.
Igor Pro also comes with demo experiments that demonstrate some of the basic geospatial display capabilities to help you get started.
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| US Pacific NW Earthquakes and Crustal Profile |
California Earthquakes and Major Faults |
Data Formats
Igor Pro includes specialized utilities for importing a variety of common geospatial data formats. You can import a wide variety of non-proprietary data formats as summarized in the following table.
| DEM/Raster Formats | Vector/Line Formats |
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Besides the custom data loaders that will import data in the listed formats, you can import a variety of simple geospatial data types using Igor Pro's various general-purpose text and binary data import operations.
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| GSHHS World Coastal Outline Map |
Data Display and Analysis
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| Monterey Submarine Canyon Profile |
In addition to the specialized geospatial data import and analysis tools, Igor Pro includes a variety of built-in operations that may be useful for displaying and analyzing geospatial data. Most useful may be some of the image analysis operations, such as ImageLineProfile and ImageTransform. For examples of how ImageLineProfile might be used, the image above shows the creation of a profile for the Monterey Canyon and the image below shows a finished and greatly modified profile of Crater Lake.
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| Bathymetry of Crater Lake, Oregon |
You can create contour plots of 2D raster data sets or project vector data using various standard map projections (orthographic, stereographic, gnomonic, general perspective, Lambert equal area, equidistant, Mercator, transverse Mercator, and Albers equal area).
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| Lambert World Projection |
You can display vector data as you would any other XY data set. In Igor Pro graphs you have control over the line width, color, patterns, etc. You can display 2D DEM data with all of the flexibility you have with normal 2D graphs.
With the Gizmo visualization tool you can construct 3D models of your DEM data to show perspective views with contours, lighting, shading, and texture maps. Two examples of the Mt. St. Helens volcano in Washington state are included in our sample image gallery. One is a perspective view of earthquakes beneath the volcano and another is an animation of the volcano before and after it's 1980 eruption.
Examples and Demos
Included with the Igor Pro installation are a number of example and demo files that will help you to get started with displaying and analyzing geospatial data. The GIS Utilities procedures include a comprehensive help file describing the various utilities and listing a wide variety of online repositories from which you can obtain data. The Half Dome Demo experiment file provides an introduction to the GISLoadWave XOP with an example of data import from a USGS SDTS DEM and DLG. The Map Projections Demo experiment file provides several examples demonstrating aspects of the built-in Project operation.
Last updated: Wednesday, December 22, 2004