science

Landmap

Landmap is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Landmap rather than just read about it. In short: Landmap was a service based at the University of Manchester, England, which provided UK academia with a free-of-charge spatial data download service, using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for maximum interoperability, which was enhanced and supported by a range of teaching and learning materials. The service was hosted at the Mimas datacentre from 2007 until 2013, and was funded by the government via Jisc.

Key takeaways

Landmap belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Landmap to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Landmap from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Landmap was a service based at the University of Manchester, England, which provided UK academia with a free-of-charge spatial data download service, using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for maximum interoperability, which was enhanced and supported by a range of teaching and learning materials. The service was hosted at the Mimas datacentre from 2007 until 2013, and was funded by the government via Jisc. The spatial data and the learning materials are primarily for students, lecturers and researchers and can be accessed only through Shibboleth or Athens or similar UK university/institution authentication.

End of service Jisc funding for the Landmap service terminated on 31 December 2013. The Landmap data purchased by Jisc have been transferred to NERC's Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) and can be accessed from there. The Learning Zone hosted by Landmap can be accessed on the Landmap Legacy site.

History The Landmap Project began late 1999 as a joint project between Mimas, UCL Department of Geomatic Engineering, and other project partners. The project produced orthorectified satellite image mosaics of Landsat, SPOT and ERS radar data and a high resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the British Isles. The DEM was quality assured using a Kinematic Global Positioning Survey (KGPS). The outputs of the Landmap Project were provided as a basic download service to the UK and Irish academic community. The Landmap Service followed a JISC subscription-based model for service cost recovery between August 2004 and July 2007. In 2005 Landmap obtained an agreement with the European Space Agency to provide ENVISAT Advanced Synthetic Radar (ASAR) data to the UK academic community through the Category 1 Project 'Monitoring the UK with ENVISAT ASAR and MERIS'. During this time a pre-processing chain was developed to provide orthorectified GeoTIFF ASAR data and to deliver this data through the Landmap website. In 2007 Landmap presented the work done as part of the Category 1 Project at the biannual ESA Fringe Workshop. In 2006 the Image Processing Course for Erdas, ENVI, IDRISI Kilimanjaro and PCI Geomatica was released onto the Landmap website. The course materials were authored by IS Limited and access was protected using Athens. The Landmap service was awarded five years' funding by Jisc from 1 August 2007, which removed the subscription element of the service and allowed for a modest budget for data acquisition and some e-learning content creation. This allowed all members of the academic community to obtain spatial data from the service free of charge, making the size and quantity of users for an academic institution irrelevant in terms of accessing spatial data. New data acquisitions included the Cities Revealed datasets provided by The GeoInformation Group and colour infrared data from Bluesky. During this time there was also an agreement with Infoterra for tasking the TopSat satellite with requests by the UK academic community for images practically anywhere in the world. These images obtained by TopSat were provided on the Landmap website and displayed in Google Earth. Landmap started to work with e-learning technology company Telaman to help create a pedagogy for the new Learning Zone area of the website. New e-learning content was sought from the academic and commercial spatial science community. The Learning Zone expanded greatly in 2008/2009 with new content provided by The GeoInformation Group and lecturers from the academic community.

References

Conference papers Millin-Chalabi, G., Schumm, J., Gupta, B., Tun, Y., Kandeh, J. and Kitmitto, K. (2011), Bournemouth University, UK Millin, G. and et al. (2009) RSPSoc Annual Conference 2009, University of Leicester, UK.

External links Official website Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Mimas

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Landmap

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Landmap claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Landmap before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Landmap ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Landmap

In research: Landmap appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Landmap in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Landmap is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics British websites, Education in the United Kingdom, Geographical databases, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Landmap outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Landmap in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Landmap means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Landmap out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Landmap in simple terms?

Why does Landmap matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Landmap?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Landmap.