Last week I mentioned terrain derivatives and promised some how-to posts. I'm going to start with an brief intro to SAGA GIS, which is my preferred software for generating terrain derivatives. SAGA was written in the early 2000s and has been regularly updated-- you can learn more from its makers here. You can download SAGA… Continue reading Intro to SAGA GIS
Making Figures in PowerPoint
There are a lot of good ways to compile different images into a single figure. For me, the print composer in QGIS works to get my map, scales, and legends into a single TIFF to embed in a word document or send as an attachment 90 percent of the time. The other 10 percent of… Continue reading Making Figures in PowerPoint
What are terrain derivatives?
Lots of people have been asking me about terrain derivatives lately, and I've been putting off blogging about them for a while because I just didn't know where to start. Instead of one master post with all the things I decided to split it into some more manageable chunks-- for both your sake and mine.… Continue reading What are terrain derivatives?
2019 Preview and Captioning Photos in Word
The primary reason I started Spatially Challenged is to have a lasting record of questions I get asked frequently. Since the American Society of Agronomy meeting in November, I've had a number of questions about terrain derivatives like curvature, terrain wetness index, etc. I promise I've heard those questions and the answers are coming! I… Continue reading 2019 Preview and Captioning Photos in Word
6 Months of Spatially Challenged!
We're getting into winter holidays, so I will likely post infrequently between now and the start of spring semester. Before that break though, here are three brief notes in celebration of 6 months of blogging! Firstly, a quick summary of the blog so far (updated as of 18 Dec 2018). Spatially Challenged has been viewed… Continue reading 6 Months of Spatially Challenged!
Visualizing Global Population
Columbus is the 14th largest city in the US, and by far the most populous place I've ever lived (source). It's the 2nd largest in the Midwest, just after Chicago. But at roughly 879,000 residents, Columbus is truly tiny compared to many global cities. I know it's a fairly small city, but I can't really… Continue reading Visualizing Global Population
Draw.io
Last week I posted about my usual QGIS to R workflow, and shared a little flowchart: This week I wanted to highlight the software I used to make it-- Draw.io, which is an open source version of Microsoft Visio. Visio is great, but it's expensive, so Draw.io usually makes more sense for me. Draw.io lets… Continue reading Draw.io
Project Files and Data Management for QGIS and R
Yesterday I was helping a friend summarize some yield monitor data. We used QGIS to determine which yield monitor observations fell within certain study areas, saved this information to a CSV, and did further analysis of this data in R. This is a really common workflow for me, and today I'm going to share some… Continue reading Project Files and Data Management for QGIS and R
Project Files in RStudio
R is an excellent, if occasionally frustrating, tool. I'm assuming if you are an R user reading this post, you've already started using RStudio to improve your user experience. If not, go get RStudio here-- it color-codes your scripts, displays your objects and functions in the working environment, and has an integrated file browser. And… Continue reading Project Files in RStudio
R Cheat Sheets: ggplot2
This month I'm making lots of graphs in R and wanted to share some of the resources I use to both inspire the types of graphs I use and then actually make them. R is an incredibly powerful, free statistics software. It can be used to process large data sets, run all sorts of statistics,… Continue reading R Cheat Sheets: ggplot2
Spatially Challenged 