Plot of temporal data sets in GRASS GIS

One of the new modules in GRASS GIS 7.03 (RC1) is g.gui.tplot. It is part of the temporal data processing framework (TGRASS) introduced with GRASS GIS 7.0 and lets you plot the values of one or more temporal datasets for a specific point. It furthermore allows plotting data of vector dataset for a defined categories and attribute. In this post I’ll use the tool to plot changes in the annual mean temperature and annual minimum temperature of the coldest month in the last century, using the CRU climate data set. First I’ll provide a brief overview of how to import and prepare the data and finally how to plot a time series using the g.gui.tplot module.

GRASS GIS 7.0.3 RC1 is out

The first release candidate of GRASS GIS 7.0.3 is out. This version includes 160 stability fixes and manual improvements, and perhaps most exciting for many GRASS GIS users on Windows, there is now winGRASS 64 bit support! For details about what is new, and for the download links, go to https://grass.osgeo.org/news/51/15/GRASS-GIS-7-0-3RC1-released/

 

GRASS GIS 7.0.2 released

For those who haven’t seen it yet, GRASS GIS 7.0.2 has been released! See here for the announcement and here for a detailed overview of all the changes (over 190 of stability fixes and improvements since GRASS GIS 7.01).

For those still using GRASS GIS 6.4, GRASS GIS 7 offers a strongly improved interface, a considerable increases in speed and efficiency, support for huge files, and a long list of new modules to analyse raster and vector data, including a full temporal framework. Also important, as a stable release series, 7.0.x enjoys long-term support.

As usual, a great thanks to the developers!

Second release candidate GRASS GIS 7.02

The second release candidate of GRASS GIS 7.02 has been released, providing further fixes and improvements. See the official announcement for more information and the download links. A big thanks to the developers for the hard work.

GRASS GIS categorical raster layers in QGIS

With the QGIS GRASS plugin, you can easily open a GRASS raster layer in QGIS. One disadvantage, however, is that if your GRASS layer has category labels, these will not show in the QGIS legend. See for example the landuse layer in the North Carolina data set,  opened in QGIS in the screenshot below.

It isn’t too much problem to define the labels in QGIS if you have few categories only, but what if your map in GRASS has many categories, all neatly labelled in GRASS. Sure you don’t want to add those category labels manually again in QGIS?

I don’t, so I wrote a small GRASS GIS addon, r.category.trim, that export the attribute table and colour table in GRASS GIS as a QGIS colour map file.

First release candidate of the upcoming GRASS GIS 7.0.2 version

Fresh from the press, that is, the GRASS email list: The first release candidate of the upcoming GRASS GIS 7.0.2 is out. This upcoming stability release provides a series of stability fixes and manual improvements. This first  release candidate GRASS GIS 7.0.2RC1 provides 160 fixes and improvements. So first a great thanks for all the hard work of the developers!

There are also two new modules: r.import and v.import.

The QGIS GRASS plugin is back

For me, one of the killer features of QGIS has always been the integration with GRASS GIS. With the GRASS GIS plugin, introduced about 10 years ago, QGIS basically provided an alternative interface for GRASS GIS. Sadly, it didn’t work well with GRASS GIS 7. So you can imagine how happy I was to see this crowd funding campaign, started in March this year by Radim Blazek, author of most parts of original GRASS plugin implementation, to upgrade the plugin.

First release candidate of the upcoming GRASS GIS 7.0.1 version is out

GRASS GIS 7.0.1 RC1 is the upcoming stability release and provides a series of stability fixes, manual improvements and a few language translations. This first release candidate GRASS GIS 7.0.1RC1 provides 168 fixes and improvements with respect to GRASS GIS 7.0.0. See here the announcement and further information.

If you want to help testing or just want to make sure to have all the latest improvements and fixes, go to the announcement page where you’ll find the download links for your system.

GRASS GIS 7.0 is out!

It has taken many years of development, but finally the new stable major release GRASS GIS 7.0.0 is available. Many congratulations to the developers, they did an incredible job. This version provides numerous new functionalities, including completely new modules (e.g., the spatio-temporal database support) and massive improvements in data handling, with support for massive vector layers and speed improvements.

Check out the press release and the list of new features. But most of all, make sure you download the new version, if you have not done so already, and start enjoying a whole new experience.

Update of r.forestfrag addon for GRASS GIS 7.0

Riitters et al. (2000) proposed a quick approach to measure the degree of forest fragmentation that could be relatively easily implemented and which only required a map with forest and non-forest. Following their approach, Sylla consult created a shell script for GRASS GIS 6.4 to create a raster layer with six categories (non-forest, patch, transitional, edge, perforated, interior and undetermined) as a measure of forest fragmentation. See their blog post with an explanation how the script works or the above-cited article for a more in-depth description.

I adapted the script to make it work on GRASS 7.0, including some further improvements, such as the option to select the size of the moving window, the option to trim the output layer to avoid the edge effect that comes with moving-window calculations and the option to keep intermediate layers.

I have now rewritten the script as a Python addon. See here for the manual page.