Raster map generator [rMap]
04 January, 2017
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General information
rMap is a mybiOSis web application for generating high quality raster maps. rMap uses geographic grid datasets (SRTM - http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/, BIOCLIM - http://www.worldclim.org/bioclim, etc.) for building dynamically raster maps. On top of the maps may be plotted thematic grids (UTM, EEA reference grids) and occurrence data of species from records stored in mybiOSis database. The quality of rasters should be acceptable both for publishing in scientific journals or for PowerPoint and poster presentations.General features
- input of thematic datasets as netCDF grid files. - flexible use of numerous color palettes. - size of output image, and geographic area of interest are user definable. - flexible settings for country borders, rivers, and coast lines. - geographic and thematic grids may be added. - flexible settings for data contours. - species distribution data may be plotted on map as symbols or as grids. - scalebars may be produced separately.UI
The interface of this application consists of two main areas. The left area includes all the settings for producing a map. The right area includes the output results (map and optionally scalebar as png type image files). The main settings panels are: - dataset for selecting the parameter data on which the map is built. - color ramp for selecting a color scale for applying on the parameter data for producing the map. - map general settings for setting the type of geographic projection, map resolution, and geographic range. - map features for defining various properties of map (borders, coaslines, grids etc.) - data on map for plotting species occurrence data. - scale bar for producing a scalebar for the map.
Settings - dataset
This setting allows you to switch among several parameter datasets. ETOPO and SRTM contain elevation data, the rest of datasets are various BIOCLIM datasets. We plan to add an additional module for importing user data from geoTIFF and netCDF datasets.
Settings - color ramp
This setting allows you to switch the color ramp that would be used for drawing parameter data on maps. In the list you will find a large selection of predefined color ramps. The color ramps having the suffix "[auto] are adaptive; they stretch their minimum-maxium values to the minimum-maximum values of parameter datasets. The rest of color ramps have a fixed selection of values when drawing parameter grid cells on map. This means that an appropriate color ramp has to be selected: if a parameter value in a grid of dataset is not included in a selected non adaptive color ramp, the color of minimum (or maximum by case) value would be used to draw the cell on map resulting in a less informative map.
Settings - map general settings
These setting can be used for general features of the output map. projection can be used for setting the map projection. However, currently we included here only Mercator projection. This is the same type of projection used by Google Maps. cm/geographic degree is a setting that specifies the resolution of output map. The higher the value here, the larger the output map. Please note that it is not currently possible to specify a value larger than 10. We'll enable skipping this value for registered donors. In example below, two centimeters per degree are specified instead of the default 1.