GEOG5102
Applied GIS Python Programming Assignment
Part A
You are provided with three Excel files that contain grass growth rates (kg/DM/Hectare) measured at regular intervals between 10/01/2013 and 13/07/2015 at a dairy farm in Ireland. The three different excel files correspond to three different trials: High stocking rate, Medium stocking rate, and Low stocking rate. Stocking rates refers to the number of dairy cows a farmer would have out grazing on a given amount of land over a certain period of time and is generally expressed as the number of livestock units (LU) per unit of land area. In our case, Low = 2.51 LU/ha; Medium = 2.92 LU/ha; and High = 3.28 LU/ha. Stocking rate is important as 1t is the main driver of milk production in grazlng dairy systems due to its impact on milk production per hectare and on the amount of grass that is utilised (eaten) per hectare.
You are required to produce a suitable figure that displays the temporal change in grass growth rate for the three treatments throughout the study period on a single plot using Python. You are also required to generate a figure which contains three subplots, one for each of the separate treatments.
Deliverables for Part A are a Notebook file (.ipynb) and a pdf of the Notebook (i.e. the .ipynb saved as a pdf including the generated outputs and any associated markdown). Please name these files as follows: (where studentnumber should be replaced with your actual student number).
studentnumber_PartA.ipynb studentnumber_PartA.pdf
Part B
During the practical sessions you gained some familiarity with scripting in Python and its integration with ArcGIS. You are required to develop a stand-alone script that will:
- Clip a raster DEM to a defined shape
- Create vector contour lines from the clipped raster DEM.
You will clip the ArranDEM.tif that you have used in Practical 3 to the extent of the polygon shapefile arranF.shp. The contour interval should be 30 meters and the base contour should be 0. Running the script. should create two outputs:
- A clipped raster DEM
- An output shapefile of 30m contour lines for the Isle of Arran.
Deliverable for Part B is the single python file that will perform. these functions when run. Please name this file as follows: studentnumber_PartB.
Three files altogether (for Part A and Part B) should be submitted to Moodle as individual files, i.e. do not zip them together.
You are responsible for ensuring that the submitted script files runs correctly and that comments are used throughout the script to describe what processes are being carried out. Please ensure all submitted scripts contain the following header:
# <script name> and <brief description of what the script does>
# student numbers
# file was created>
Don't forget that the ArcGIS Pro Help can be a useful resource if you need to figure out the syntax for a particular command. This assignment accounts for 40% of the credits for the Applied GIS course and Part A and Part B are weighted equally.
Please submit these files to Moodle by 17:00 on Friday 28th March 2025