Integrating GRASS 5.0 and R: GIS and modern statistics for data analysis

Abstract

With the release of the open-source GIS GRASS 5.0 in early 1999, opportunities are presented for integration with the open-sourcestatistical data analysis programming environment. After reviewing these two software systems, an example is given of the advantages yielded by the complementing of GIS techniques with modern statistical analysis. The example shows how GTOPO30 digital elevation models, with a resolution of 30 seconds, may be subjected to geomorphometric analysis; the data are taken from the Kosovo region. In these examples, is run interactively within the GRASS 5.0 environment, transfering data by writing and reading text files; the operating system is Linux.