topic configure multi-class feature for time? in Data Management Questions

configure multi-class feature for time?

PaulLefebvre — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 13:41:05 GMT

I have a set of ~300 fixed agricultural field polygons in the Amazon for which I have 3 timed events or four historical land cover classes - year of removal of original forest for pasture, year of conversion from pasture to agriculture, and year in which double-cropping began. I am trying to figure out how to enable time on this layer so I can put it in a storymap and allow others to browse the data to get historical information about specific parcels. The data are currently in a shapefile format with an ID column containing a parcel number in each row, and year columns from 1976 to 2014 with a class label of 1-4 (forest/pasture/soy/double) for each parcel in each year; I also have a version with only 4 columns: parcel number, year of deforestation, year of pasture-ag conversion, and year of intensification. All the documentation I find for enabling time on features seems to refer to tracking a single time event, or a begin-end date, but not 3 separate events. I've also thought of rasterizing the whole mess and displaying it with the vector parcel map overlaid and labelled... Is it possible to do what I want using the built-in time tools?

Re: configure multi-class feature for time?

NeilAyres — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 13:48:31 GMT

As far as I recall, time slider looks at each record for the time, so you could have a time enabled layer for "deforested" (using a definition or something) and see each land parcel appear in the appropriate year. Similarly for your other categories.

But you can't time slide across each record. Or am I misunderstanding the situation.

Re: configure multi-class feature for time?

PaulLefebvre — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 14:02:11 GMT

I think you are understanding it - I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to restructure my data so I can get the slider to see the different events in time, but I think I may have one dimension too many - multiple events - so a single slider won't capture all four possible cover types in a given year. I may have to kluge it using the scrolling feature in a storymap...

Re: configure multi-class feature for time?

NeilAyres — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 19:02:53 GMT

Yes, I think you are on the right track. You may have to investigate the beginning and end times for each period to get it to display correctly.

There is a tool to do this.

calculate-end-time