Difference between Zonal Statistics and Image Analyst Statistical Means Function?

[AlyssaRenteria]

I was wondering if anyone knew the difference between the zonal statistics and statistical means function. I have two raster layers that I want to find the average of the corresponding cells and create a new raster layer. What would you choose? Or what questions should I ask myself before choosing either tool?

[clt_cabq · Accepted solution]

Zonal statistics calculate the mean of values in one raster according to 'zones' or cells of a given value in another raster. Imagine if you had a value raster where the cells were the count of something, and you had another raster that had been classified in to 3 discrete types of areas. Zonal statistics would calculate the mean in the value raster for each of the 3 types of areas in the zone raster.

For the statistical means - that simply calculates the average of over 2 or more rasters that are overlaid. For what you want to do, I think this is the approach you want to take, and you may want to think about the Focal Statistics which uses a roving window (typically 3x3 cells) around the target cell to calculate the statistic you want. The focal statistics tool can provide a bit of smoothing to a surface, but that may or may not be useful for you.