[R-sig-Geo] Open source GIS and R

[Michael Sumner]

I know this is anathemic, but "you might consider" Manifold. It's not
open source, but it's accessible (i.e. affordable) and well, it's
pretty cool.

Sorry folks.

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 11:47 PM, Barry Rowlingson
<b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Manuel Spínola <mspinola10 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Dear list members,
>>
>> I am an ecologist interested in spatial and landscape ecology and a user of
>> ArcView 3.3 with little experience in ArcGis but I would like to migrate to
>> an open source GIS with an interface with R.
>> I know that there are several options: QGIS, SAGA, GRASS, Illwis.
>>
>> What will be the best option of these or other alternatives?
>
>  What's best for you and best for me depends on what we are trying to do!
>
>  The idea of an 'interface with R' is a bit fluffy, and could be a
> number of things. QGis has the wonderful 'manageR' system, which is a
> full environment for running and editing R, with rapid exchange of
> R-Spatial objects back and forth from QGis. I think Carson is planning
> to produce a standalone version that doesn't need QGis as an
> independent R GUI, it's *that* good. I only wish I had more time to
> help with the dev on that.
>
>  You might also consider PostGIS. This is a spatial database, so you
> would keep all your (primarily) vector data in that, and learn the SQL
> magic for doing stuff like polygon overlay, point-in-poly,
> what's-the-longest-river-that's-partly-in-Worcestershire-that-has-a-newt-density-of-more-than-10-newts/km-when-surveyed-by-either-Dave-or-Nigel-but-not-Simon
> questions. You can read PostGIS data into R and use it as the front
> end via the sp package mapping functions.
>
>  So many options, so little time! If all you want is pretty map
> production then you can do pretty maps in R, or export your final data
> as Shapefiles or rasters for import into QGis (or gvSIG, or OpenJump
> etc etc) for your open source mapping needs...
>
> Barry
>
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-- 
Michael Sumner
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania
Hobart, Australia
e-mail: mdsumner at gmail.com