GEOB 370 Study Guide - Final Guide: Geographic Coordinate System, Scale Of Temperature, Phenology
8 Apr 2019
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Document Summary
Coordinate systems are a means of representing any location on earth with a set of numbers. All coordinate systems are referenced to a datum, a mathematical abstraction of the earth"s surface, typically consisting of a reference ellipsoid representing that models the earth"s surface. Geographic coordinate systems (gcs) represent locations in angular units on this reference ellipsoid. Projected coordinate systems (pcs) represent points on a plane. They are based on a gcs and a projection, a mathematical transformation from the curved surface of the ellipsoid to the flat, planar surface used in the projection. There are two fundamental ways of representing geography: discrete objects and continuous fields. The discrete object view represents the world as discrete objects in space (e. g. lakes, fields, houses, roads) with well-defined boundaries surrounded by otherwise empty space. Objects are typically defined by their dimension as points (0d), lines (1d), polygons (2d), or volumes (3d).
