- New enhancements to Ocean Content in the Living Atlas of the World
The Living Atlas team is excited about the most recent ocean content release. With 1 new service and significant enhancements to 7 additional services this update improves performance and expands analytical capabilities. The new and updated services include:
Distance to Coast (new)
Distance from Shore (updated)
Seafloor Aragonite (updated)
Seafloor Bathymetry (updated)
Seafloor Dissolved Oxygen (updated)
Seafloor Salinity (updated)
Seafloor Silicate (updated)
Seafloor Temperature (updated)
Enhancements and Explanations
Raster Functions: This release adds raster functions to many of the ocean services. When you publish an image service you can define functions that are applied by the server on the fly when requested by a client application. To learn more, see Server-side processing with raster functions.
This release of Oceans Content includes the following functions:
Aspect Function
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input elevation values to identify the downslope direction of the maximum rate of change in value from each cell to its neighbors (aspect).
Hillshade Function
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input elevation values to generate a single band grayscale hillshade.
Slope Function
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input elevation values to calculate the rate of change of elevation, or slope in degrees for each DEM cell.
Unit Conversion Function (meters to feet)
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input depth values to convert the units from meters to feet.
Unit Conversion Function (Celsius to Fahrenheit)
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input temperature values to convert the units from Celsius to Fahrenheit.
Unit Conversion Function (Celsius to Kelvin)
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input temperature values to convert the units from Celsius to Kelvin.
Unit Conversion Function (kilometers to miles)
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to the input distance values to convert the units from kilometers to miles.
Color Map Function (Cartographic Renderer)
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to transform the pixel values to display the raster data as a red, green, blue (RGB) image, based on a predefined color ramp.
Color Map Function (Classified Renderer)
- This server-side function will apply an on-the-fly process to transform the pixel values to display the raster data as a red, green, blue (RGB) image, based on a predefined color classification.
Raster Function Templates may be activated in ArcMap by loading the service into the map, right clicking on the service in the Table of Contents to select Properties, and selecting the desired function from the Server Functions tab. For help with invoking raster functions via REST calls, see http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/rest/apiref/.
For more information on raster functions and raster function templates please see the following links:
http://server.arcgis.com/en/server/latest/publish-services/linux/server-side-raster-functions.htm
Below is a listing of the services and associated raster functions.
Distance from Shore
- Unit Conversion – kilometers to miles
- Cartographic Renderer
- Classified Renderer
Distance to Coast
- Unit Conversion – kilometers to miles
- Cartographic Renderer
- Classified Renderer
Seafloor Aragonite (updated)
- Cartographic Renderer
Seafloor Bathymetry (updated)
- Unit Conversion – meters to feet
- Cartographic Renderer
- Aspect
- Slope
- Hillshade
Seafloor Dissolved Oxygen (updated)
- Cartographic Renderer
Seafloor Salinity (updated)
- Cartographic Renderer
Seafloor Silicate (updated)
- Cartographic Renderer
Seafloor Temperature (updated)
- Cartographic Renderer
- Unit Conversion – Celsius to Fahrenheit
- Unit Conversion – Celsius to Kelvin
Compression: The source data for the services is scientific in nature and has a large pixel depth (32-bit or 16bit). In previous releases LZ77 was used as the default compression. In this release we utilized the LERC compression and kept the data at the native pixel depth.
LERC—Limited Error Raster Compression (LERC) is an efficient lossy compression method recommended for single-band or elevation data with a large pixel depth, such as float, 32-bit, 16-bit, or 12-bit data. LERC compresses 5 to 10 times better and 5 to 10 times faster than LZ77 for float data. LERC is also better with integer data. When using integer data, and the error limit specified is 0.99 or less, LERC is considered a lossless compression.
In previous releases the data had been converted from 32bit to 16bit and then a value attribute table (VAT) was built to support querying as well as color mapping. This made the service slow when loading in a map. This also had drawbacks for analysis as the pixel values did not represent the actual data values which were stored in the VAT.
- This third release has incorporated much of the user feedback for the Oceans2 image services. We encourage you to continue providing feedback regarding use and performance and recommended enhancements.
Living Atlas Community
- How do I Use? Combine content from the Living Atlas with your own data. Create powerful new maps and applications!
- How do I contribute? Join the growing community of Living Atlas of the World contributors. There are two ways to contribute!
- Learn more about the ready-to-use content that is available in the Living Atlas of the World, including how you can contribute your maps and data.
- Use Living Atlas Image Services in Your Desktop Analysis blog post
- Living Atlas Oceans Gallery
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