ProRaster Scientific

ProRaster Scientific is now available for purchase. Please make sure it is compatible with the multispectral data you wish to view and analyse, and that your requirements will be met working within the limitations of the product.

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ProRaster User Guide download

Thank you for purchasing ProRaster Scientific! You are now a part of the ProRaster team. Please drop us a note via the contact page, we would love to hear from you. Please report bugs and suggestions, we welcome your feedback.

For the latest updates to ProRaster Scientific, please visit the Product Updates page. To see what is coming and to contribute ideas, visit the roadmap page.

Welcome to the world of satellite multispectral data processing, rendering, and analysis! ProRaster Scientific was designed to open this world to you, and that has been the key underlying goal of the whole ProRaster project. ProRaster Scientific takes you beyond the simple visualisation of multispectral data to processing, and analysis, and provides you with the key to unlock value in these huge and largely untapped datasets.

When working with multispectral data in ProRaster Scientific, you will likely follow a processing pipeline like this –

1. Download scenes from your data provider.

The Earth Observing Satellites acquire data in swaths called a “scene”. Each scene covers a static footprint on the Earth and the satellite will typically revisit that scene regularly and reacquire it many times over the life of the bird. This data is processed and then distributed to users as a package containing rasters for each spectral band and other information. This is a scene, and it is your starting point.

You can download Landsat scenes for free from USGS Earth Explorer –
https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

You can download Sentinel 2 scenes for free from the Copernicus Open Access Hub –

https://scihub.copernicus.eu/dhus/#/home

2. Unpack and store your scenes on your local drive or network.

The scene will be delivered as a compressed archive. You will need to decompress (unpack) this archive and store the scene data package on your local drive or network. How you organise this is up to you.

3. Create a multispectral scene database and add the scenes to the database.

In ProRaster, add each scene you download to your scene database. The database is a small file and does not contain a copy of the raster data. ProRaster will generate a virtual raster “assembly” for each new scene and store it alongside the database. You will access all data from the scene via this assembly MVR from now on.

4. Render the scenes.

Take a look at your new scene! Open the scene database browser and select the scene. Right-click and from the pop-up context menu, select “Render Scene”. Choose a band combination to highlight specific attributes of the Earth. Your scene will then be displayed in ProRaster.

5. Create a multispectral product database.

In ProRaster we distinguish between a basic scene and a multispectral data product. A product starts life as one or more scenes, to which you can apply processing operations in a waterfall cascade pattern. Before you can create a product, you need to create a database to store it in.

6. Browse for and select scenes from which to create a multispectral product.

Open a scene database browser and select a scene. Right-click and from the pop-up context menu, select “Create scene product”. A new product will be added to your product database and the new product will be opened in the product editor dialog.

7. Edit the product and apply processing operations.

You can apply the following processing operations to the scene in your product – Mask, Clip, Reproject, Calculator, and Index. In addition, you can generate a rendering algorithm, compute statistics, and export the data to a raster. Define these operations in any order you wish to build a waterfall cascade processing pattern. Thereafter, when you change any operation, all the downstream operations will get updated.

As your level of expertise improves, you will go on to combine products into more advanced products and combine rendering algorithms into more advanced visualisations.

ProRaster Scientific builds upon the features of ProRaster Premium. For a full list of all the features in ProRaster Premium and included in ProRaster Scientific, please refer to the ProRaster family product page.

Basic Training

The following videos are best viewed on YouTube and will help you learn how to use ProRaser Scientific.

New User Interface Features in ProRaster Scientific

I take you on a walk-around of the new user interface features in ProRaster Scientific.

ProRaster Scientific builds on – and extends – ProRaster Premium. This video takes a quick look at the new user interface elements in ProRaster Scientific.

Downloading Landsat Scenes to ProRaster Scientific

I take you through the basics of downloading a Landsat scene from Earth Explorer and importing it into ProRaster Scientific.

Rendering Satellite Imagery in ProRaster Scientific

See all the different ways that you can render a multispectral satellite imagery scene in ProRaster Scientific.

I build algorithms manually, via the scene database browser, and via the product editor. There are many ways to render multispectral data in ProRaster Scientific and it is important to be familiar with the most efficient and powerful mechanisms.

The Multispectral Scene Database in ProRaster Scientific

Learn how to create and maintain multispectral satellite scene databases in ProRaster Scientific. See demonstrations of how to import scenes and find out what the scene database does, and where it is stored.

Using the Scene Database Browser in ProRaster Scientific

Learn how to use the multispectral satellite scene browser to query your scene database and find the scenes you want.

See how to create products from the browser including scenes, mosaics, collated scenes and mosaics, and scene sequences.

The Multispectral Product Database in ProRaster Scientific

Learn how to create and maintain multispectral satellite product databases in ProRaster Scientific. Find out what the product database does, and where it is stored. See how to make products from scenes and how to edit products.

The Multispectral Product Editor in ProRaster Scientific

Learn how to build virtual processing cascades in the multispectral satellite imagery product editor in ProRaster Scientific. See an overview of the operations available and learn how to control operation execution.

Working with Spot7 in ProRaster Scientific

Learn how to manually import a Spot7 multispectral satellite scene into ProRaster Scientific. With high-resolution Blue, Green, Red, and Near Infrared spectral bands, Spot7 data provide ample opportunity for vegetation analysis.

Working with GeoEye1 in ProRaster Scientific

Learn how to manually import a GeoEye1 multispectral satellite scene into ProRaster Scientific. With high-resolution Blue, Green, Red, and Near Infrared spectral bands and with a very high-resolution panchromatic band, GeoEye1 data provide ample opportunity for vegetation analysis.

Before watching this video, watch the Spot7 video which covers the procedure in more detail.

Introducing the Processing Menu in ProRaster Scientific

Explore the new Raster Processing operations in ProRaster Scientific. The operations generate virtual raster outputs and so operations on huge rasters can be visualized immediately, without executing any processing!

Worked Examples

The following videos are best viewed on YouTube and show how to use ProRaster Scientific in worked examples using real data and analysis.

ProRaster Scientific NDVI Analysis – Coorabulka Station – Part 1 of 6

In this six-part series, I use ProRaster Scientific to perform a vegetation change analysis at Coorabulka Station in western Queensland over an entire year from July 2022 to July 2023. Coorabulka is located in the “channel country”, where infrequent flooding events can transform the station’s vegetation and carrying capacity.

In Part 1, I take a look at Coorabulka and the hardware I use to perform the processing, then build the multispectral satellite imagery scene database in ProRaster Scientific.

ProRaster Scientific NDVI Analysis – Coorabulka Station – Part 2 of 6

In this six-part series, I use ProRaster Scientific to perform a vegetation change analysis at Coorabulka Station in western Queensland over an entire year from July 2022 to July 2023. Coorabulka is located in the “channel country”, where infrequent flooding events can transform the station’s vegetation and carrying capacity.

In Part 2, I show you how to build mosaics from satellite scenes and then discuss the advantages of using collation to improve your data quality in a mosaic. We put these mosaic products together into a mosaic sequence that adds a temporal dimension to our raster dataset.

ProRaster Scientific NDVI Analysis – Coorabulka Station – Part 3 of 6

In this six-part series, I use ProRaster Scientific to perform a vegetation change analysis at Coorabulka Station in western Queensland over an entire year from July 2022 to July 2023. Coorabulka is located in the “channel country”, where infrequent flooding events can transform the station’s vegetation and carrying capacity.

In Part 3, we go deeper into building high-quality Collated Mosaic Sequences that draw in data from multiple scene revisits both before and after the target visitation time. We can then render the entire data sequence using an enhanced Natural Color band ratio.

ProRaster Scientific NDVI Analysis – Coorabulka Station – Part 4 of 6

In this six-part series, I use ProRaster Scientific to perform a vegetation change analysis at Coorabulka Station in western Queensland over an entire year from July 2022 to July 2023. Coorabulka is located in the “channel country”, where infrequent flooding events can transform the station’s vegetation and carrying capacity.

In Part 4, we take the collated mosaic sequence and apply a cascade of processing operations to it. This includes computing NDVI, clipping the data to a polygon of Coorabulka, applying raster calculator operations, and computing statistics. I go into detail for each of these operations, as well as give you some tips on how to work with the Product Editor.

ProRaster Scientific NDVI Analysis – Coorabulka Station – Part 5 of 6

In this six-part series, I use ProRaster Scientific to perform a vegetation change analysis at Coorabulka Station in western Queensland over an entire year from July 2022 to July 2023. Coorabulka is located in the “channel country”, where infrequent flooding events can transform the station’s vegetation and carrying capacity.

In Part 5, we review our results as temporal imagery. We look at the mosaic sequence, the collated mosaic sequence, and the NDVI sequence for Coorabulka.

ProRaster Scientific NDVI Analysis – Coorabulka Station – Part 6 of 6

In this six-part series, I use ProRaster Scientific to perform a vegetation change analysis at Coorabulka Station in western Queensland over an entire year from July 2022 to July 2023. Coorabulka is located in the “channel country”, where infrequent flooding events can transform the station’s vegetation and carrying capacity.

In Part 6, I examine the temporal statistics in Excel and draw conclusions. I graph all the statistical measures and explain what they are telling us about the change in vegetation at the station. I create a vegetation biomass proxy measure and discuss the reasoning behind such a measure, and how it can be related to stocking rates and station carrying capacity.

ProRaster Scientific – Wooroloo Fire Scar Analysis

The Wooroloo fire burned through the foothills east of Perth, Western Australia, from February 1 to 6, 2021.

Using Landsat 8 and 9 surface reflectance data, I build a scene sequence product consisting of six events, and a processing operation cascade. This includes computing the BAI (Burned Area Index) spectral index, applying a calculator operation, clipping to a polygon, and computing detailed statistics.

ProRaster Scientific – Tjoritja Fire Scar Analysis

The Tjoritja (West MacDonnell) National Park is located west of Alice Springs in Central Australia. In March 2023 it suffered extensive damage from an uncontrolled bushfire.

I use Landsat 8 & 9 surface reflectance imagery to analyse the fire scar. We will track the fire scar over time and use the NBRT1 index to map the extent. In this video, you will see an example of how to build branched processing chains in the multispectral satellite imagery Product Editor.

Pre-First Release Examples

The following videos are best viewed on YouTube and were made during the development of ProRaster Scientific to guide and inform the software development.

Mapping 50 years of Bauxite Mining in Western Australian Jarrah Forests with Landsat

I map the extent of bauxite mining in the Jarrah forests southeast of Perth in Western Australia from 1974 through to February 2022 using Landsat satellite multispectral imagery.

Prompted by the article “Undermined”, by Victoria Laurie in the August 13, 2022 edition of the Weekend Australian, I investigate how 50 years of Landsat data can be used to map the extent of mining operations over time.

I use ProRaster Scientific to build a time series of Landsat scenes from 1974 to 2022. I use Surface Reflectance where available. In earlier scenes, this drops back to top-of-atmosphere reflectance, and in the earliest scenes I use MSS instrument data.

I manually polygonise the mining operations extents for each scene and then combine these polygons in MapInfo Pro into a single complex polygons, for which I can compute the area.

I compute the NDVI index for the 2022 surface reflectance scene to see whether this index can be used to differentiate between undisturbed forest and rehabilitated areas but conclude that it cannot be used.

The Making of “Mapping 50 years of Bauxite Mining in Western Australian Jarrah Forests with Landsat”

In this video, I describe the technology in ProRaster Scientific that was used to make the Bauxite mapping video.

Sneak Peek: Pansharpening in ProRaster Scientific

Pansharpening is a process that improves the apparent resolution of satellite multispectral data at render time by integrating a high-resolution panchromatic band into the RGB color data acquired from three spectral bands. In this video, I show you how to perform panchromatic sharpening of a satellite scene. In ProRaster, pansharpening is performed on the fly so there is no preparation or processing required. You can control the brightness of the imagery via the data transform for the pan component.

Sneak Peek: Importing Landsat and Sentinel 2 scenes into ProRaster Scientific

ProRaster Scientific is under development and will focus on rendering and processing satellite multispectral data.

In the video below, I give you a sneak peek into the import process. This will analyse a satellite scene that you have acquired (for example, from the USGS) and generates a virtual raster that contains all the data for the scene, as well as value-added products.

ProRaster Scientific can import Landsat and Sentinel 2 scenes.

Landsat Preprocessing for ProRaster Scientific

The video below discusses the ins and outs of pre-processing Landsat data. ProRaster Scientific will help with this process and it is complicated and confusing to come to grips with. I hope this video helps explain the details.