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Week 2: Coordinate Systems and Spatial Geometry

Core Questions

  • How do geographic and projected coordinate systems differ?
  • Why are distances measured on longitude/latitude coordinates often ecologically misleading?
  • How do points, lines, and polygons represent ecological data?

Concepts

  • Latitude and longitude.
  • Geographic versus projected coordinate systems.
  • Datums and EPSG codes.
  • Distances on a sphere versus projected distances.
  • Points, lines, polygons, and geometry operations.

Python Tools

  • GeoPandas.
  • Shapely.
  • pyproj.

Applied Lab

Students reproject spatial data, inspect geometries, create buffers, calculate centroids, and compare distance calculations in geographic and projected coordinate systems.

Deliverable

Submit a notebook that demonstrates why point1.distance(point2) on longitude/latitude coordinates is generally not an appropriate ecological distance calculation.