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Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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Installing and using QGIS
Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting,
UNESCAP, 09-2017
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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Introduction / Objective
QGIS is an open-source geographic information system (GIS) that allows for the editing, visualization,
analysis and modelling of spatial data. It is freely available and can be downloaded to run on a variety
of operating systems such as Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc. The series of tasks in this lab exercise will
guide participants in the installation of the QGIS software onto their computer and give a basic
introduction into its structure.
At the end of this task you will have
downloaded and installed the latest QGIS version on to your computer
familiarized yourself with, customized and saved the QGIS interface
navigated your way around QGIS
learned about and installed QGIS plugins
1) Create a folder on your C:/ drive on your computer called QGISlab by right clicking on the C:
drive and navigating down to the New / Folder.
2) Go to the QGIS download page and download the latest 64bit version of QGIS for windows
which is QGIS 2.18.12 'Las Palmas’ by clicking once. If you have a 32 bit machine or using another operating system search the bottom of the page for your operating system and
download the correct operating system version of QGIS.
http://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html
Task 1 – Intro to QGIS
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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3) You browser will download the file to the browsers default download directory. By pressing
the control key and the letter J at the same time a popup window will show you the folder
where the QGIS file has been downloaded. The QGIS file will be called:
QGIS-OSGeo4W-2.18.12-1-Setup-x86_64.exe
4) Move or copy the above file to your C:/QGISlab folder and
o double click on the file osgeo4w-setup-x86_64.exe. You will get a popup window with a
security warning.
o hit the run button to start the installation process and follow the prompts. There is no
need to install the data sets suggested by QGIS.
5) Once QGIS has completed installing
o click on the Windows Start icon at the bottom left of your screen and
o double click on the QGIS desktop icon to open QGIS.
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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6) The QGIS desktop interface has panels and toolbars along with a main canvas area where
spatial data is displayed.
Canvas area – spatial
data displayed here
Browser panel
Displays folder structure
and location of data
Data layer panel
Displays spatial data sets being used
Load data panel
Loads spatial data by type
(vector, raster, etc.)
Toolbar
Icons correspond to a tool that
performs a spatial operation
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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7) Take a few minutes and hover over the icons at the top of the QGIS window for a second or two to see
what the tool is named.
8) Customize your QGIS interface by adding the log message panel to show processes and messages
generated by QGIS
Click on the View tab at the top left
Scroll down to the Panels menu and ensure that the layout, browser and log messages
panels are highlighted
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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9) One feature of QGIS that is extremely useful are plugins. Plugins are written by developers and users to
extend the functionality of QGIS. Plugins are written to provide specific geospatial processing
capabilities to QGIS.
o Click on the Plugins tab at top of the QGIS window
o Click on the Manage and Install Plugins to open up the online QGIS repository where the plugins
are located
o The plugins that are currently installed in your session will have an X beside them but there are a
few more we will use that will help in the construction of our land cover statistics
In the Search bar on the Plugins page search for the
o OpenLayers plugin and scroll down to it, it will become highlighted with a blue
background
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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o Once highlighted click on the install plugin box at the bottom right corner to install
the plugin.
o The OpenLayers plugin allows a user to bring in Google Maps, Bing Maps,
OpenStreetMap layers and more into their workspace.
10) Repeat the plugin installation for the remaining plugins that you will use:
o Statist - Calculate and show statistics for a field
o GroupStats – Frequency statistics
o MOLUSC – land cover statistics
o Rasterstats – Compute raster statistics
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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11) Now that all the plugins are activated, save the project to the C:\QGISlab folder as masterlayout.qgs
12) One more thing to do. Load in the Google map service into QGIS to familiarise yourself with the
pan/zoom in and out functions.
o Click on the Web tab at the top of the QGIS window
o Scroll down to the OpenLayers plugin tool
o Scroll down to the Google Maps tool
o Click on the Google Satellite tool
This should load the Google Satellite imagery used in Google Maps into QGIS as a background reference,
which will be used later on for verifying various land cover classification products to be used in the
remaining exercise.
Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS
UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017
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13) Finally get familiar with the QGIS interface by testing and exploring the software. The best way to learn
is hands on. The more you use it the more you will get comfortable with the software.
A good place to start is here:
http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/training_manual/introduction/overview.html
14) Other resources for using QGIS
http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/training_manual/introduction/index.html
https://mltconsecol.github.io/QGIS-Tutorial/QGIS-Tutorial/Treglia_QGIS_Tutorial_2_12.pdf