GRASS GIS

GRASS GIS is a free and open source desktop geographic system and geospatial analytics library which serves as a platform for open science. It is licensed under GNU GPL.

To learn about GRASS GIS:

In addition to providing overview of GRASS GIS evolution and features related to research, the presentations highlight connection of GRASS GIS modules and tools to published scientific papers which you will find in the GRASS GIS manual pages. For example, scroll down at the end of these two pages to see the references as well as links to recent source code changes in the context of other documentation:

https://grass.osgeo.org/grass76/manuals/v.surf.rst

https://grass.osgeo.org/grass76/manuals/r.watershed

To learn how to use GRASS GIS, you can use:

Official website and download: https://grass.osgeo.org

Here, we will focus on reproducibility, particularly on how to keeps records of your work done in GRASS GIS, and we will see how GRASS GIS is used to publish geospatial research.

Recording your work in GRASS GIS

In GUI Layer Manager save output window or save command prompt into log file.

When working in shell (terminal) commands are saved in history file.

Reviewing history

See the file where the history is saved:

echo $HISTFILE

Review the history:

less $HISTFILE

Make a backup of the currently used history file:

cp $HISTFILE workflow.txt

Store the unsaved history to the file:

history -a

Data provenance

Basic raster map matedata with command used to create the map:

r.info elevation

The provenance information by itself:

r.info -h elevation

The provenance of a vector map (series of commands and additional information):

v.info -h lakes

Examples of how GRASS GIS is used to publish research

Here is couple of examples of how GRASS GIS was used to publish and disseminate research.

FUTURES

FUTURES urban model currently being developed at NCSU as GRASS GIS module.

Temporal framework

Temporal framework for managing and analyzing time series developed by Soeren Gebbert an a part of GRASS GIS.

Resources

Videos

Papers

  • Rocchini, D., Petras, V., Petrasova, A., Horning, N., Furtkevicova, L., Neteler, M., Leutner, B., Wegmann, M. 2017, Open data and open source for remote sensing training in ecology. Ecological Informatics, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2017.05.004
  • Mitasova, H and Neteler, M, 2004, GRASS as Open Source - Free Software GIS: accomplishments and perspectives. Transactions in GIS 8(2), 145-154
  • Neteler, Markus, M. H. Bowman, Martin Landa, and Markus Metz. “GRASS GIS: A Multi-Purpose Open Source GIS.” Environmental Modelling & Software 31, 2012: 124–130.

Books

  • Neteler, M. and Mitasova, H., 2008, Open source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach, Third edition, Springer, New York, 406p
  • Hardin, E., Mitasova, H., Tateosian, L., Overton, M., 2014, GIS-based Analysis of Coastal Lidar Time-Series, Springer Briefs in Computer Science, Springer, New York, 84 p.
  • Petrasova, A., Harmon, B., Petras, V., Mitasova, H., 2015, Tangible Modeling with Open Source GIS, Springer International Publishing, 135 p. eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-25775-4, Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-25773-0, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-25775-4

Optional Assignment

Try to reproduce the following paper and let us know how far did you get:

This paper, Fusion of high-resolution DEMs for water flow modeling, presents a technique for updating lidar-based DEM with 3D data acquired by UAS (drone). The software used for computations is GRASS GIS and the code implementing the presented method is available. You should try to reproduce the results presented in this paper, for example, you can generate the same image as figure 3 in the paper.