# Chapter 4. Geospatial data¶

In this session, we will introduced the gdal geospatial module which can read a wide range of scientific data formats. You will find that using it to read data is quite similar to the work we did last week on netCDF datasets.

The main challenges are also much the same: very often, you need to be able to read data from a ‘stack’ of image files and generate a useful 3D (space and time) dataset from these. Once you have the data in such a form, there are many things we can do with it, and very many of these are convenient to do using array-based expressions such as in numpy (consider the simplicity of the expression absorbed = rad * (1 - albedo) from last week’s exercise).

That said, it can sometimes be quite an effort to prepare datasets in this form. Last week, we developed a ‘valid data’ mask from the GlobAlbedo dataset, as invalid data were stored as nan. Very often though, scientific datasets have more complex ‘Quality Control’ (QC) information, that gives per-pixel information describing the quality of the product at that location (e.g. it was very cloudy so the results are not so good).

To explore this, we will first consider the MODIS Leaf Area Index (LAI) product that is mapped at 1 km resolution, every 8 days from the year 2000.

We will learn how to read in these data (in hdf format) using gdal, and how to interpret the QC information in such products to produce valid data masks. As an exercise, you will wrap some code around that to form a 3D masked array of the dataset.

Next, we will consider how to download such data. This should be a reinforcement of material from last week, but it is useful to know how to conveniently access NASA data products. A challenge in the exercise then is to download a different dataset (MODIS snow cover) for the UK, and form a masked 3D dataset from this.

Finally, we will introduce vector datasets and show you python tools that allow you (among many other things) to build a mask in the projection and sampling of your spatial dataset (MODIS LAI in this case).

There are many features and as many complexities to the Python tools we will deal with today, but in this material, we cover some very typical tasks you will want to do. They all revolve around generating masked 3D datasets from NASA MODIS datasets, which is a very useful form of global biophysical information over the last decade+. We also provide much material for further reading and use when you are more confident in your programming.

A final point here is that the material we cover today is very closely related to what you will need to do in the first section of your assessed practical that we will introduce next week, so you really need to get to grips with this now.

There is not as much ‘new’ material as in previous weeks now, but we assume that you have understood, and can make use of, material from those lectures.

First, we will examine data from a NASA MODIS product on Leaf Area Index (LAI).

## 4.1 MODIS LAI product¶

GDAL covers a much wider set of file formats and methods than the netCDF library that we previously used.

Basic operation involves:

• open a spatial dataset (an hdf format file here)
• specify which subsets you want.

We can explore the subsets in the file with GetSubDatasets():

# how to find out which datasets are in the file

import gdal # Import GDAL library bindings

# The file that we shall be using
# Needs to be on current directory
filename = 'data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf'

g = gdal.Open(filename)
# g should now be a GDAL dataset, but if the file isn't found
# g will be none. Let's test this:
if g is None:
print "Problem opening file %s!" % filename
else:
print "File %s opened fine" % filename

subdatasets = g.GetSubDatasets()
for fname, name in subdatasets:
print name
print "\t", fname

File data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf opened fine
[1200x1200] Fpar_1km MOD_Grid_MOD15A2 (8-bit unsigned integer)
HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:Fpar_1km
[1200x1200] Lai_1km MOD_Grid_MOD15A2 (8-bit unsigned integer)
HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:Lai_1km
[1200x1200] FparLai_QC MOD_Grid_MOD15A2 (8-bit unsigned integer)
HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:FparLai_QC
[1200x1200] FparExtra_QC MOD_Grid_MOD15A2 (8-bit unsigned integer)
HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:FparExtra_QC
[1200x1200] FparStdDev_1km MOD_Grid_MOD15A2 (8-bit unsigned integer)
HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:FparStdDev_1km
[1200x1200] LaiStdDev_1km MOD_Grid_MOD15A2 (8-bit unsigned integer)
HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:LaiStdDev_1km


In the previous code snippet we have done a number of different things:

1. Import the GDAL library
2. Open a file with GDAL, storing a handler to the file in g
3. Test that g is not None (as this indicates failure opening the file. Try changing filename above to something else)
4. We then use the GetSubDatasets() method to read out information on the different subdatasets available from this file (compare to the output of gdalinfo on the shelf earlier)
5. Loop over the retrieved subdatasets to print the name (human-readable information) and the GDAL filename. This last item is the filename that you need to use to tell GDAL to open a particular data layer of the 6 layers present in this example

Let’s say that we want to access the LAI information. By contrasting the output of the above code (or gdalinfo) to the contents of the LAI/fAPAR product information page, we find out that we want the layers for Lai_1km, FparLai_Qc, FparExtra_QC and LaiStdDev_1km.

To read these individual datasets, we need to open each of them individually using GDAL, and the GDAL filenames used above:

# How to access specific datasets in gdal

# Let's create a list with the selected layer names
selected_layers = [  "Lai_1km", "FparLai_QC", "LaiStdDev_1km" ]

# We will store the data in a dictionary
# Initialise an empty dictionary
data = {}

# for convenience, we will use string substitution to create a
# template for GDAL filenames, which we'll substitute on the fly:
file_template = 'HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"%s":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:%s'
# This has two substitutions (the %s parts) which will refer to:
# - the filename
# - the data layer

for i, layer in enumerate ( selected_layers ):
this_file = file_template % ( filename, layer )
print "Opening Layer %d: %s" % (i+1, this_file )
g = gdal.Open ( this_file )

if g is None:
raise IOError
print "\t>>> Read %s!" % layer

Opening Layer 1: HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:Lai_1km
Opening Layer 2: HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:FparLai_QC
Opening Layer 3: HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:LaiStdDev_1km


In the previous code, we have seen a way of neatly creating the filenames required by GDAL to access the independent datasets: a template string that gets substituted with the filename and the layer name. Note that the presence of double quotes in the template requires us to use single quotes around it. The data is now stored in a dictionary, and can be accessed as e.g. data['Lai_1km'] which is a numpy array:

type(data['Lai_1km'])

numpy.ndarray

print data['Lai_1km']

[[ 3  3  2 ...,  6  8 21]
[ 4  3  6 ...,  8 18 14]
[ 3 12 11 ..., 12  8  8]
...,
[ 2  3  2 ..., 18 11 17]
[ 2  3  3 ..., 16 19 15]
[ 3  2  2 ..., 15 16 15]]


Now we have to translate the LAI values into meaningful quantities. According to the LAI webpage, there is a scale factor of 0.1 involved for LAI and SD LAI:

lai = data['Lai_1km'] * 0.1
lai_sd = data['LaiStdDev_1km'] * 0.1

print "LAI"
print lai
print "SD"
print lai_sd

LAI
[[ 0.3  0.3  0.2 ...,  0.6  0.8  2.1]
[ 0.4  0.3  0.6 ...,  0.8  1.8  1.4]
[ 0.3  1.2  1.1 ...,  1.2  0.8  0.8]
...,
[ 0.2  0.3  0.2 ...,  1.8  1.1  1.7]
[ 0.2  0.3  0.3 ...,  1.6  1.9  1.5]
[ 0.3  0.2  0.2 ...,  1.5  1.6  1.5]]
SD
[[ 0.2  0.2  0.1 ...,  0.2  0.1  0.3]
[ 0.2  0.2  0.2 ...,  0.2  0.3  0.2]
[ 0.   0.1  0.2 ...,  0.1  0.2  0.2]
...,
[ 0.1  0.1  0.1 ...,  0.3  0.   0.1]
[ 0.1  0.1  0.1 ...,  0.2  0.2  0.1]
[ 0.1  0.1  0.1 ...,  0.1  0.2  0.1]]

# plot the LAI

import pylab as plt

# colormap
cmap = plt.cm.Greens

plt.imshow(lai,interpolation='none',vmin=0.1,vmax=4.,cmap=cmap)
plt.title('MODIS LAI data: DOY 185 2011')
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02af3f7f80>

# plot the LAI std

import pylab as plt

# colormap
cmap = plt.cm.spectral
# this sets the no data colour. 'k' is black

plt.imshow(lai_sd,interpolation='none',vmax=1.,cmap=cmap)
plt.title('MODIS LAI STD data: DOY 185 2011')
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02ad460bd8>


It is not possible to produce LAI estimates if it is persistently cloudy, so the dataset may contain some gaps.

These are identified in the dataset using the QC (Quality Control) information.

We should then examine this.

The codes for this are also given on the LAI product page. They are described as bit combinations:

Bit No.

Parameter Name

Bit Combination

Explanation

0

MODLAND_QC bits

0

Good quality (main algorithm with or without saturation)

1

Other Quality (back-up algorithm or fill values)

1

Sensor

0

TERRA

1

AQUA

2

0

Detectors apparently fine for up to 50% of channels 1 2

1

3-4

CloudState

00

Significant clouds NOT present (clear)

01

Significant clouds WERE present

10

Mixed clouds present on pixel

11

Cloud state not defined assumed clear

5-7

CF_QC

000

Main (RT) method used best result possible (no saturation)

001

Main (RT) method used with saturation. Good very usable

010

Main (RT) method failed due to bad geometry empirical algorithm used

011

Main (RT) method failed due to problems other than geometry empirical algorithm used

100

Pixel not produced at all value coudn’t be retrieved (possible reasons: bad L1B data unusable MODAGAGG data)

In using this information, it is up to the use which data he/she wants to pass through for any further processing. There are clearly trade-offs: if you look for only the highest quality data, then the number of samples is likely to be lower than if you were more tolerant. But if you are too tolerant, you will get spurious results. You may find useful information on how to convert from actual QA flags to diagnostics in this page (they focus on NDVI/EVI, but the theory is the same).

But let’s just say that we want to use only the highest quality data.

This means we want bit 0 to be 0 ...

Let’s have a look at the QC data:

qc = data['FparLai_QC'] # Get the QC data which is an unsigned 8 bit byte
print qc , qc.dtype

[[2 2 0 ..., 0 2 2]
[2 2 0 ..., 2 0 2]
[0 2 0 ..., 0 0 0]
...,
[0 0 2 ..., 0 8 0]
[0 0 0 ..., 0 0 2]
[0 2 0 ..., 2 2 2]] uint8


We see various byte values:

np.unique(qc)

array([  0,   2,   8,  10,  16,  18,  32,  34,  40,  42,  48,  50,  97,
99, 105, 107, 113, 115, 157], dtype=uint8)

# translated into binary using bin()
for i in np.unique(qc):
print i,bin(i)

0 0b0
2 0b10
8 0b1000
10 0b1010
16 0b10000
18 0b10010
32 0b100000
34 0b100010
40 0b101000
42 0b101010
48 0b110000
50 0b110010
97 0b1100001
99 0b1100011
105 0b1101001
107 0b1101011
113 0b1110001
115 0b1110011
157 0b10011101


We could try to come up with an interpretation of each of these ... or we could try to mask the qc bytes to see bit 0 only if that’s what we are interested in. This is quite possibly a new concept for most of you, but it is very common that when interpreting QC data in data products, you need to think about bit masking. You will find more details on this in the advanced section of Chapter 1, but we will consider the minimum we need right now.

Byte data are formed of 8 bits, e.g.:

105 ==  (1 * 2**6) +          (1 * 2**5) +          (0 * 2**4) +          (1 * 2**3) +          (0 * 2**2) +          (0 * 2**1) +          (1 * 2**0)

So, in binary, we represent the decimal number 105 by 1101001 as we saw above.

The QC values are to be interpreted in this manner.

If we want only bit 1, we can perform a bitwise operation with the byte data.

In this case, it would be an ‘and’ operation (&) with the value 1:

# suppose we consider the value 105
# which from above, we know to have
# bit 0 set as 1
test = 105
bit_zero = test & 1
print bit_zero

1

# suppose we consider the value 104
# which we could work out has bit 1 as 0
test = 104
bit_zero = test & 1
print bit_zero

0

# other bit fields are a 'little' more complicated
tests = np.unique(qc)

for t in tests:
# if we want bit field 5-7
# we form a binary mask
# but 0
# and use & as before and right shift 5 (>> 5)
qa57 = (t & mask57) >> 5
qa0  = (t & mask0) >> 0
print t,qa57,qa0,bin(t)

0 0 0 0b0
2 0 0 0b10
8 0 0 0b1000
10 0 0 0b1010
16 0 0 0b10000
18 0 0 0b10010
32 1 0 0b100000
34 1 0 0b100010
40 1 0 0b101000
42 1 0 0b101010
48 1 0 0b110000
50 1 0 0b110010
97 3 1 0b1100001
99 3 1 0b1100011
105 3 1 0b1101001
107 3 1 0b1101011
113 3 1 0b1110001
115 3 1 0b1110011
157 4 1 0b10011101


So, for example (examining the table above) 105 is interpreted at 0b011 in fields 5 to 7 (which is 3 in decimal). This indicates that ‘Main (RT) method failed due to problems other than geometry empirical algorithm used’. Here, bit zero is set to 1, so this is a ‘bad’ pixel.

In this case, we are only interested in bit 0, which is an easier task than inmterpreting all of the bits.

# the good data are where qc bit 1 is 0

qc = data['FparLai_QC'] # Get the QC data
# find bit 0
qc = qc & 1

plt.imshow(qc)
plt.title('QC bit 1')
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02ad33ebd8>


We can use this mask to generate a masked array. Masked arrays, as we have seen before, are like normal arrays, but they have an associated mask.

Remember that the mask in a masked array should be False for good data, so we can directly use qc as defined above.

We shall also choose another colormap (there are lots to choose from), and set values outside the 0.1 and 4 to be shown as black pixels.

# colormap
cmap = plt.cm.Greens
# this sets the no data colour. 'k' is black

laim = np.ma.array ( lai, mask=qc )

# and plot it
plt.imshow ( laim, cmap=cmap, interpolation='none', vmin=0.1, vmax=4)
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02ad1bdef0>


Similarly, we can do a similar thing for Standard Deviation

cmap = plt.cm.spectral
stdm = np.ma.array ( lai_sd, mask=qc )
plt.imshow ( stdm, cmap=cmap, interpolation='none', vmin=0.001, vmax=0.5)
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02ad04a2d8>


For convenience, we might wrap all of this up into a function:

import gdal
import numpy as np
import numpy.ma as ma

def getLAI(filename, \
qc_layer = 'FparLai_QC',\
scale = [0.1, 0.1],\
selected_layers = ["Lai_1km", "LaiStdDev_1km"]):

# get the QC layer too
selected_layers.append(qc_layer)
scale.append(1)
# We will store the data in a dictionary
# Initialise an empty dictionary
data = {}
# for convenience, we will use string substitution to create a
# template for GDAL filenames, which we'll substitute on the fly:
file_template = 'HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"%s":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:%s'
# This has two substitutions (the %s parts) which will refer to:
# - the filename
# - the data layer
for i,layer in enumerate(selected_layers):
this_file = file_template % ( filename, layer )
g = gdal.Open ( this_file )

if g is None:
raise IOError

qc = data[qc_layer] # Get the QC data
# find bit 0
qc = qc & 1

odata = {}
for layer in selected_layers[:-1]:

return odata

filename = 'data/MCD15A2.A2011185.h09v05.005.2011213154534.hdf'

lai_data = getLAI(filename)

# colormap
cmap = plt.cm.Greens
# this sets the no data colour. 'k' is black

# and plot it
plt.imshow ( lai_data['Lai_1km'], cmap=cmap, interpolation='nearest', vmin=0.1, vmax=4)
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02acec95a8>


## Exercise 4.1¶

You are given the MODIS LAI data files for the year 2012 in the directory data for the UK (MODIS tile h17v03).

Read these LAI datasets into a masked array, using QA bit 0 to mask the data (i.e. good quality data only) and generate a movie of LAI.

You should end up with something like:

For the exercise and notes above, you were supplied with several datasets that had been previously downloaded.

### 4.2.1 Reverb¶

These NASA data can be accessed in several ways (except on Wednesdays when they go down for maintainance (or when there is a Government shutdown ...)). The most direct way is to use Reverb to explore and access data. If you do this, you can, for example search for MODIS snow cover MOD10 datasets covering the UK for some given time period. If you follow this through, e.g. selecting MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m SIN Grid V005 and then search for ‘granules’, you should get access to the datasets you want (select e.g. one of the files for gid h17v03 and save to cart). You then view the items in your cart, click ‘download’ and then ‘save’.

This should give you a text file with some urls in it, e.g.:

ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOST/MOD10A1.005/2013.02.21/MOD10A1.A2013052.h17v03.005.2013054054219.hdf

The hdf dataset is, in this case ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOST/MOD10A1.005/2013.02.21/MOD10A1.A2013052.h17v03.005.2013054054219.hdf.

From this, we see that the data server is n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org (the actual server used will vary from time to time: if the links supplied do not work, go through reverb and work out what the new server is) and that the MODIS snow products for the MODIS Terra instrument are in the directory:

ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOST.

If we explored that, we would find the datasets from the MODIS Aqua platform were in:

ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA.

The directories below that give the date and filename.

### 4.2.2 FTP access¶

Now we have discovered something about the directory structure on the server, we could explore this to get the datasets we want (rather than having to go through Reverb).

Some of the datasets on Reverb are acessible only through http, but the snow products (at present) are availble by ftp.

In either case, if we want to run some ‘batch’ process to download many files (e.g. all files for a year for some tile), the first thing we need is the set of urls for the files we want.

We won’t go into detail here about how to get this, but it is covered in the advanced section (at the very least, you could always get the set of urls from Reverb).

So, let’s suppose now that we have a file containing some urls that we want to pull:

!head -10 < data/robot_snow.2012.txt

ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h00v08.005.2012006235251.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h00v09.005.2012006235244.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h00v10.005.2012006234603.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h01v08.005.2012006234607.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h01v09.005.2012006234607.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h01v10.005.2012006235245.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h01v11.005.2012006234656.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h02v06.005.2012006235323.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h02v08.005.2012006234419.hdf
ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h02v09.005.2012006234416.hdf


This is a file containing the filenames of all MOD10A1 (daily snow cover) files for a given year, pulled from the ftp server. It is possible to do this in Python (see advanced section). You don’t need to run this, as it has already been run for you and the results put in the files, but an example is given:

import sys
import runpy
# put the python directory in path
sys.path.insert(0,'./python')

realy_want_to = False
if realy_want_to:
runpy.run_module('ftp-snow',init_globals={'year':2014})

ls -l data/robot_snow.????.txt

-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis  9034752 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2000.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 10820568 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2001.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 16321938 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2002.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 22423068 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2003.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis  7633374 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2004.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 18872448 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2005.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 11433078 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2006.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 22663686 Nov 11 15:58 data/robot_snow.2007.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 22668990 Nov 11 15:59 data/robot_snow.2008.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 22705317 Nov 11 15:59 data/robot_snow.2009.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 22712370 Nov 11 15:59 data/robot_snow.2010.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 17129166 Nov 11 15:59 data/robot_snow.2011.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 22756824 Nov 11 15:59 data/robot_snow.2012.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 18104898 Nov 11 15:59 data/robot_snow.2013.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 plewis plewis 10222780 Nov 11 15:38 data/robot_snow.2014.txt


We can do similar things for http, but that is a little more complicated (again, see advanced notes or zat > data/robot.txt <python/zat>__ for the MODIS LAI product. Note that you shouldn’t need to do this unless you need to update the list of files.

!head -10 < data/robot.txt

http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h00v08.005.2007172150237.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h00v09.005.2007172150920.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h00v10.005.2007172151610.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h01v07.005.2007172152152.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h01v08.005.2007172150246.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h01v09.005.2007172150923.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h01v10.005.2007177210359.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h01v11.005.2007172151611.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h02v06.005.2007172144545.hdf
http://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MODIS_Composites/MOTA/MCD15A2.005/2002.07.04/MCD15A2.A2002185.h02v08.005.2007172150221.hdf


The file data/robot_snow.2012.txt contains the names for all tiles and all files.

So if we want just e.g. tile h17v03 and sensor (MOST), we can most easily filter this in unix:

tile=h17v03
year=2012
type=MOSA

file=data/robot_snow.${year}_${type}_${tile}.txt grep$tile < data/robot_snow.$year.txt | grep$type > $file # how many files? wc -l <$file

# look at the first 10 ...
head -10 < $file  366 ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h17v03.005.2012007000016.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.02/MYD10A1.A2012002.h17v03.005.2012004055201.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.03/MYD10A1.A2012003.h17v03.005.2012005071456.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.04/MYD10A1.A2012004.h17v03.005.2012006212932.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.05/MYD10A1.A2012005.h17v03.005.2012007050111.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.06/MYD10A1.A2012006.h17v03.005.2012008045959.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.07/MYD10A1.A2012007.h17v03.005.2012010223914.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.08/MYD10A1.A2012008.h17v03.005.2012011144532.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.09/MYD10A1.A2012009.h17v03.005.2012011204927.hdf ftp://n4ftl01u.ecs.nasa.gov/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.10/MYD10A1.A2012010.h17v03.005.2012012053808.hdf  With a more sensible set of urls now (only a few hundred), we can consider how to download them. We can (of course) do this in Python (see advanced notes), but we can also use unix tools such as curl or wget, which may be easier. For example, in bash: tile=h17v03 year=2012 type=MOSA file=snow_list_${tile}_${year}_${type}.txt

# cd temporarily to the local directory
pushd data
# -nH --cut-dirs=3 : ignore the directories
wget -nc -i $file -nH --cut-dirs=3 popd  or in tcsh: set tile=h17v03 set year=2012 set type=MOSA file=snow_list_${tile}_${year}_${type}.txt

# cd temporarily to the local directory
pushd data
# -nH --cut-dirs=3 : ignore the directories
wget -nc -i $file -nH --cut-dirs=3 popd  For the moment, let’s just pull only some of these by filtering the month as well: # NB -- running this will still take some time !!! # so only run this cell if/when you want to bothered=False tile=h17v03 year=2012 type=MOSA month=01 file=data/robot_snow.${year}_${type}_${tile}_${month}.txt # conditional statement in bash if [[ "$bothered" == T* ]]
then

# the dot in the year / month grep need to be escaped
# because dot means something special to grep
grep $tile < data/robot_snow.$year.txt | grep $type | grep "${year}\.${month}" >$file
fi

# how many files?
wc -l < $file # look at the first 10 ... head -10 <$file

31
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.01/MYD10A1.A2012001.h17v03.005.2012007000016.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.02/MYD10A1.A2012002.h17v03.005.2012004055201.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.03/MYD10A1.A2012003.h17v03.005.2012005071456.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.04/MYD10A1.A2012004.h17v03.005.2012006212932.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.05/MYD10A1.A2012005.h17v03.005.2012007050111.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.06/MYD10A1.A2012006.h17v03.005.2012008045959.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.07/MYD10A1.A2012007.h17v03.005.2012010223914.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.08/MYD10A1.A2012008.h17v03.005.2012011144532.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.09/MYD10A1.A2012009.h17v03.005.2012011204927.hdf
ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/DP0/MOSA/MYD10A1.005/2012.01.10/MYD10A1.A2012010.h17v03.005.2012012053808.hdf

tile=h17v03
year=2012
type=MOSA
month=01

file=robot_snow.${year}_${type}_${tile}_${month}.txt

# NB -- running this will still take some time !!!
# so only run this cell if/when you want to
bothered=False

# conditional statement in bash
if [[ "$bothered" == T* ]] then # cd temporarily to the local directory pushd data # -nc : no clobber : dont download if its there already # -nH --cut-dirs=3 : ignore the directories wget -nc -i$file -nH --cut-dirs=3
# cd back again
popd
fi


## Exercise 4.2 A Different Dataset¶

We have now dowloaded a different dataset, the MOD10A product, which is the 500 m MODIS daily snow cover product, over the UK.

This is a good opportunity to see if you can apply what was learned above about interpreting QC information and using gdal to examine a dataset.

If you examine the data description page, you will see that the data are in HDF EOS format (the same as the LAI product).

Download the MODIS Terra daily snow product for the UK for the year 2012 for the month of February using the urls in data/robot_snow.2012.txt and put them in the directory data.

### E4.2.1 Explore¶

Show all of the subset data layers in this dataset.

Suppose we are interested in the dataset Fractional_Snow_Cover over the land surface.

Read this dataset for one of the files into a numpy array and show a plot of the dataset.

The data description page tells us that values of 239 will indicate whether the data is ocean. You can use this information to build the water mask.

Demonstrate how to build a water mask from one of these files, setting the mask False for land and True for water.

Produce a plot of this.

As well as having a land/water mask, we should generate a mask for valid pixels. For the snow dataset, values between 0 and 100 (inclusive) represent valid snow cover data values. Other values are not valid for some reason. Set the mask to False for valid pixels and True for others. Produce a plot of the mask.

### E4.3.6 3D dataset¶

Generate a 3D masked numpy array using the valid pixel mask for masking, of Fractional_Snow_Cover for each day of February 2012.

You might like to produce a movie of the result.

Hint: you will need a list of filenames for this. You can either use glob as in previous exercises, or you might notice that you have the file data/robot_snow.2012_MOST_h17v03_02.txt with the urls, from which you should be able to derive the file names. However you get your list of filenames, you should probably apply a sort() to the result to make sure they are in the correct order.

In this section, we will use a pre-defined function to generate a mask from some vector boundary data.

In this case, we will generate a mask for Ireland, projected into the coordinate system of the MODIS LAI dataset, and use that to generate a new LAI data only for Ireland.

Sometimes, geospatial data is acquired and recorded for particular geometric objects such as polygons or lines. An example is a road layout, where each road is represented as a geometric object (a line, with points given in a geographical projection), with a number of added features associated with it, such as the road name, whether it is a toll road, or whether it is dual-carriageway, etc. This data is quite different to a raster, where the entire scene is tessellated into pixels, and each pixel holds a value (or an array of value in the case of multiband rasterfiles).

If you are familiar with databases, vector files are effectively a database, where one of the fields is a geometry object (a line in our previous road example, or a polygon if you consider a cadastral system). We can thus select different records by writing queries on the features. Some of these queries might be spatial (e.g. check whether a point is inside a particular country polygon).

The most common format for vector data is the ESRI Shapfile, which is a multifile format (i.e., several files are needed in order to access the data). We’ll start by getting hold of a shapefile that contains the countries of the world as polygons, together with information on country name, capital name, population, etc. The file is available here.

We will download the file with wget (or curl if you want to), and uncompress it using unzip in the shell:

# Downloads the data using wget
!wget -nc http://aprsworld.net/gisdata/world/world.zip -O data/world.zip
# or if you want to use curl...
#! curl http://aprsworld.net/gisdata/world/world.zip -o world.zip
!pushd data;unzip -o -x world.zip;popd

File data/world.zip' already there; not retrieving.
~/p/geogg122/Chapter4_GDAL/data ~/p/geogg122/Chapter4_GDAL
Archive:  world.zip
inflating: world.dbf
inflating: world.shp
inflating: world.shx
~/p/geogg122/Chapter4_GDAL


We need to import ogr, and then open the file. As with GDAL, we get a handler to the file, (g in this case). OGR files can have different layers, although Shapefiles only have one. We need to select the layer using GetLayer(0) (selecting the first layer).

from osgeo import ogr

g = ogr.Open( "data/world.shp" )
layer = g.GetLayer( 0 )


In order to see a field (the field NAME) we can loop over the features in the layer, and use the GetField('NAME') method. We’ll only do ten features here:

n_feat = 0
for feat in layer:

print feat.GetField('NAME')

n_feat += 1
if n_feat == 10:
break

GUATEMALA
BOLIVIA
PARAGUAY
URUGUAY
SURINAME
FRENCH GUIANA
WESTERN SAHARA
GAMBIA
MOROCCO
MALI


If you wanted to see the different layers, we could do this using:

layerDefinition = layer.GetLayerDefn()

for i in range(layerDefinition.GetFieldCount()):
print "Field %d: %s" % ( i+1, layerDefinition.GetFieldDefn(i).GetName() )

Field 1: NAME
Field 2: CAPITAL
Field 3: APPROX
Field 4: AREA
Field 5: SOURCETHM


There is much more information on using ogr on the associated notebook OGR_Python that you should explore at some point.

One thing we may often wish to dowith such vector datsets is produce a mask, e.g. for national boundaries. One of the complexities of this is changing the projection that the vector data come in to that of the raster dataset.

This is too involved to go over in this session, so we will simply present you with a function to achieve this.

Most of the code below should be familiar from above (we make use of the getLAI() function we developed).

import sys
sys.path.insert(0,'python')

import os
if 'GDAL_DATA' not in os.environ:
os.environ["GDAL_DATA"] = '/opt/anaconda/share/gdal'

# test this on an LAI file

# the data file name
filename = 'data/MCD15A2.A2012273.h17v03.005.2012297134400.hdf'

# a layer (doesn't matter so much which: use for geometry info)
layer = 'Lai_1km'
# the full dataset specification
file_template = 'HDF4_EOS:EOS_GRID:"%s":MOD_Grid_MOD15A2:%s'
file_spec = file_template%(filename,layer)

# from the layer IRELAND in world.shp
target_vector_file = "data/world.shp",\
attribute_filter = "NAME = 'IRELAND'")
# get the LAI data
data = getLAI(filename)

# 'mask' is True for Ireland
# so take the opposite

plt.title('LAI for Eire: 2012273')
plt.imshow(data['Lai_1km'],vmax=6)
plt.colorbar()

<matplotlib.colorbar.Colorbar instance at 0x7f02b0b7a128>
`

## Exercise 4.3¶

Apply the concepts above to generate a 3D masked numpy data array of LAI and std LAI for Eire for the year 2012.

Plot your results and make a move of LAI.

Plot average LAI for Eire as a function of day of year for 2012.

# Summary¶

In this session, we have learned to use some geospatial tools using GDAL in Python. A good set of working notes on how to use GDAL has been developed that you will find useful for further reading, as well as looking at the advanced section.

We have also very briefly introduced dealing with vector datasets in ogr, but this was mainly through the use of a pre-defined function that will take an ESRI shapefile (vector dataset), warp this to the projection of a raster dataset, and produce a mask for a given layer in the vector file.

If there is time in the class, we will develop some exercises to examine the datasets we have generated and/or to explore some different datasets or different locations.