Land class for the Dominican Republic

[sirsanka 0]

Hello,I'm looking for someone who knows well the landscape of the Dominican Republic. I'm working in the landclass update for that area and the data that I got is too vague. Anyone out there?Thanks!

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hola whatever your name is,Not a lot of us FS enthusiasts here, what exactly do you need?At least, here is the revised land class for the Santo Domingo area - from San Crist

[sirsanka 0]

Thanks...Would you like to try my version?

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Thank you very much, whatever your name is, for the file. This is certainly a very ambitious effort to attempt to cover the entire island of Hispaniola.You do not mention the source that you have used, or whether it is based on personal knowledge of the island.And you ask if anyone knows the island, but you do not say what you want in particular.So, please forgive me if the following comments are not what you seek.D.R.1) You have pretty much covered the country in only 5 or 6 or 7 land class values. But, like all places in the world, land use here is quite varied, certainly more varied than that. Perhaps you could attempt a greater diversity of land class values.2) In your file, a large part of the country is covered with 29-Seasonal Tropical Forest. On a densely populated island like this, forests are degraded in large part, except for some mountainous areas. So you might also try using 34-Tropical Degraded Forest, 28-Montane Tropical Forests in mountainous regions, and 33-Tropical Rainforest. Or even 90-Rain Green Tropical Forest. Also remember that palms are commonly found in lowlands and coastal areas, although this does not preclude their (very limited) presence in highlands, of course.3) This is still pretty essentially an agricultural society (although the economy in general is not dominated by this sector.) You do not seem to show any crop land class values at all. 4) Of course, population here is quite dense, so perhaps you could intersperse the forest and crop land class with a lot of suburban values. Particularly in coastal areas and lowlands, we have pretty continuous habitation with little unoccupied land, whereas you show mostly unsettled forests.5) You also show a lack of variety in your urban land class and only use a few urban or suburban land class values. In addition, not all inhabited areas show regular grid patterns here, so you could use non-grid values as well.6) There seems to be a displacement of your values for the entire island - much of your land class is, in fact, in the sea and all of it is compressed in the wrong geographic coordinates. Perhaps this is the result of your method for creating the bgl and the extents that you have chosen. But I could be mistaken - maybe this is voluntary. Here is an image of your file - the location of the real island is traced in black:http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/18204.jpg7) None of the principal urban centers is displayed in your file. Santo Domingo, an extremely large city of almost 3 million inhabitants, is shown as mostly forest. Nor do you show Santiago, La Romana, Puerto Plata, or any of the principal cities. Here is a comparison of your Santo Domingo (on top) and mine (below it) - you show it as mostly 29-Seasonal Tropical Forest, with some 117-Small City Suburban Grid Wet and a small region of 121-Large City Highrise.http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/18205.jpgAnd here is a picture of the real thing, representing the central part of the area covered (from Haina to the Faro a Col

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Luis."In general, it is quite difficult to modify land class for areas that one does not personally know. Only the use of good aerial images can make this possible. Most land cover/land use data available on the internet is either riddled with errors or very simplistic (and often both), and does not make good scenery."I agree wholeheartledly. The GIS data available is 1km data at best, and FS already uses that data. Aerial images and first-hand knowledge would be the best sources for changes, with perhaps emphasis on the aeril images. In my corner of the world, I often think things exist that in reality, do not! An aerial photo and then confirmation by going there, reveal the truth of land usage.Dick

[sirsanka 0]

Hi Luis,Sorry for the lack of info...I'm Juan Pizarro, I'm from Puerto Rico and married to a beautiful Dominican woman. I was the one who did the land class of Puerto Rico a while ago. The data that I found for the Hispaniola only use a limited set of classes.I grabbed the data from http://www.cipotato.org/diva/data/DataServer.htmThey seem to cover the entire world but as I said is limited.Thanks for the input...

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hola Juan,Mucho gusto en conocerte. I think I tried the first version of your land class for la isla del encanto.Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you with your project for Quisqueya - it certainly needs a new land class (and water class, and new coasts, and rivers, and roads ...)And I would be very happy to take a look at any future version of this project (for obvious reasons.)Best regards.Luis

[sirsanka 0]

Saludos (Greetings)!Is there any tool that could grab the default land class along with the coordinates? I'm trying to align the map that I made by trial and error. I use the tmfviewer to make a screen shot of the area and then aligned/stretch my map to it yet my .inf calculations are off. Help please!GraciasJuan

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Juan.Do you have PaintshopPro? or Photoshop?If so, I could e-mail you a 900x600 TIF file that covers N22.5,W75.00 to N16.875, W67.50This file is 8-bit greyscale... and I can give you a PAL palette file so you can play with it in color, before saving it as a RAW file for resample.The data is from the Olson landcover 1km data ( same as used in Flight Simulator ) but I have altered the sea as transparent, and have only the Dominican Republic and surrounding small islands as landmass. The projection is Geographic with WGS84 datum... just what is needed. I can also give you an INF file that should make a valid landclass of the entire area.All you'd need to do is to alter the values in a paint program to suit your observations. The Olson data is about the same as what's in Flight Simulator.. so you'll need aerial photos or other materials to fine tune this landclass source. But this will get you close to what you need for a start.http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/19182.jpgmailto:ludowr@charter.netHere's the INF ( you'd need to change the brackets ):; DominicanLC.inf; Huge source{Source}Type = ClassU8SourceDir ="."SourceFile = "DominicanLC.raw"Lon = -75.00Lat = 22.5NumOfCellsPerLine = 900NumOfLines = 675CellXdimensionDeg=0.00833333376795000 CellYdimensionDeg=0.00833333376795000 {Destination}DestDir = "."DestBaseFileName = "DominicanLC"UseSourceDimensions = 0NorthLat = 22.5SouthLat = 16.875EastLong = -67.50WestLong = -75.00Dick

[sirsanka 0]

This is great!I'll use Photoshop to work on it. I have saved the map directly from the post. Let's go to work.Thanks Dick

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Juan.Caution... that jpeg won't be right.Try this:http://www.flatface.net/~rhumba/Zips/Domin...20Landclass.zipThat should get you going. The TIF can be edited directly, and could be saved as a RAW file. Note the TIF is 8-bit, and the RAW file should be saved as 8-bit as well.Dick