Extensions and Other Tools
Geospatial Modeling Environment
GME provides you with a suite of analysis and modelling tools, ranging from small 'building blocks' that you can use to construct a sophisticated work-flow, to completely self-contained analysis programs. It also uses the extraordinarily powerful open source software R as the statistical engine to drive some of the analysis tools. One of the many strengths of R is that it is open source, completely transparent and well documented: important characteristics for any scientific analytical software.
GRASS GIS
GRASS GIS, commonly referred to as GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System), is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics and maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization. GRASS GIS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies.
MapServer
MapServer is an open source platform for publishing spatial data and creating interactive mapping applications to the web. It has been in existence since the mid 90’s and is recognized as mature and stable, with ongoing active development. Its primary focus is producing maps from multiple layers including base imagery and spatial data sets. It also provides intelligent labeling with advanced typography and layout including collision-detection. It can read and serve spatial data in a variety of formats including Shapefiles, WMS, GDAL, PostGIS, and GeoTIFF. It is often used to produce map tiles along with its MapCache extensions. It has libraries that enable application development in a variety of languages including Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, and PHP.
Open Jump
OpenJUMP is an open source Geographic Information System (GIS) written in the Java programming language. It is developed and maintained by a group of volunteers from around the globe. The current version can read and write shapefiles and simple GML files. It has limited support for the display of images and good support for showing data retrieved from WFS and WMS web-services. So you can use it as GIS Data Viewer. However, it's particular strength is the editing of geometry and attribute data.
OpenLayers
OpenLayers is a front-end UI library for creating web-based spatial apps using javascript. It supports a variety of layer sources and backends. For example, map tiles can be pulled from GoogleMaps or from a custom tile source. The advantage this brings is that it enables developers to reuse elements such as tile sources, and focus instead on the more unique aspects of their application such as the “business logic”. Default components such as tile sources can easily be swapped out at a later time. It supports bitmap and vector layers, including points, lines and polygons. One of its most widely used features is the ability to overlay data layers on top of base maps. http://openlayers.org
R
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS. This software has virtually unlimited spatial analysis capabilities but is a command line interface that can interface with ArcGIS, GRASS, PostGIS,and Google Earth.
Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES)
A GIS Application for Assessing, Mapping, and Quantifying the Social Values of Ecosystem Services. Ecosystem services can be defined in various ways; simply put, they are the benefits provided by nature, which contribute to human well-being. These benefits can range from tangible products such as food and fresh water to cultural services such as recreation and aesthetics. As the use of these benefits continues to increase, additional pressures are placed on the natural ecosystems providing them. This makes it all the more important when assessing possible tradeoffs among ecosystem services to consider the human attitudes and preferences that express underlying social values associated with their benefits. While some of these values can be accounted for through economic markets, other values can be more difficult to quantify, and attaching dollar amounts to them may not be very useful in all cases. Regardless of the processes or units used for quantifying such values, the ability to map them and relate them to the ecosystem services to which they are attributed is necessary for effective assessments.
