GEOREFERENCING AND

COORDINATE SYSTEMS

• Also, Rectification/registration
• Georeferencing is the process of taking a
digital image, it could be an airphoto, a
scanned geologic map, or a picture of a
topographic map, and adding geographic
information to the image so that GIS or
mapping software can 'place' the image in its
appropriate real world location.
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• Georeferencing is transforming raster data
from a geometric domain to a geographic
domain using a base map/image having
geographic coordinates.
• Aligning your data with a location on the
Earth’s surface
-Need to collect ground control points (GCPs).
- can use google earth for ground control points.
Spatial referencing systems
There are two spatial referencing systems:

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• 1. Geographic coordinate system: Assumes
the earth has a curved surface. locates objects
on a curved surface.
• 2. plane coordinate system: Considers the
earth to be a flat surface. locates objects on a
plane.
Geographic coordinate system
• It consists of a network of intersecting curved
lines – longitudes (meridians) and latitudes
(parallels).
• Expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds.
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• 1degree = 60minutes
• 1minute = 60 seconds

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 Geographic coordinate system…
• Meridians originate from the prime meridian,
and they range from 0 to 180 going east and 0
to -180 going west.
• Latitudes begin at the equator and run from 0
to 90 from the equator to the north pole and
0 to -90 from the equator to the south pole.
Shape of the earth: Geoid, Ellipsoid,
datums
• Shape of the earth - geoid
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 Shape of the earth, Ellipsoid, datums…
• A geographic coordinate system attempts to
model the shape of the earth as accurately as
possible – to smoothen earth’s surface.
• Ellipsoid – model used to describe the earth as a
smooth curved surface.
- can either be a sphere or a spheroid
• Spheroid more accurately represent the earth
than a sphere
• Mathematical equations are used to describe the
shape of the earth as an ellipsoid.

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 Shape of the earth, Ellipsoid, datums…

• However no single ellipsoid can model the

bumpiness all over the earth’s surface, there
are more than one ellipsoids developed.
• A geographic coordinate system needs a way
to align the ellipsoid being used to the surface
of the earth for the region being studied.
• For this purpose a geographic coordinate
system uses a datum .
Shape of the earth, Geoid, Ellipsoid,
datums…
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 Shape of the earth, Geoid, Ellipsoid,
datums
• A datum shifts the ellipsoid to one’s region, or
to one’s area of interest.

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• Datum is a mathematical equation that
defines the origin of the geographic
coordinate system as the point where the
ellipsoid matches up perfectly with the surface
of the earth – all other points in the system
are referenced to the origin.
Shape of the earth, Geoid, Ellipsoid,
datums
• Thus datum determines how your geographic
coordinate system assigns latitude and
longitude values to feature locations.

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• Just as there are different spheroids to
different parts of the world, there are
different datums to help align the spheroid to
the surface of the earth in different regions.
Shape of the earth, Geoid,
Ellipsoid, datums
• Referencing coordinates to wrong datum can
result in errors of hundreds of meters.
• Examples of datums:
- WGS84 (most widely used);
- North American Datum (NAD)1983
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 Plane coordinate systems/Map
projections
• A geographic coordinate system can be
converted to a plane coordinate system
through a process called projection.
• the curved surface of the Earth surface (as
modeled by an ellipsoid/datum) is mapped
onto a flat plane using a MAP PROJECTION
• A map projection is a mathematically
described technique to represent the curved
planet’s surface on a flat map.
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• a plane coordinate system consist of lines that
intersect at right angles forming a grid.
• It has an origin, x-axis, and y-axis, and a unit
for measuring distance.
• The x and y coordinate values will be positive
only in one quadrant of the map (the upper
right).
• Positive coordinates more desirable on
published maps.
• Hence the use of: False eastings, false
northings.
• .
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• Examples of map projections: UTM,
sinusoidal, Robinson.

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• There’s no way to flatten out a spherical
surface without stretching more some areas
than others: compromising errors.
• map projections can be grouped according to
the properties they preserve.
• Conformal
Minimise distortion in shape/angles.
important on topographical maps,
• Equivalence ( or equal-area ) minimise
distortion in area. important on
distribution/density maps, property maps.
• Equidistance minimize distortion in distance.
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• True-directional
Minimize distortion in direction.

• Choice of projection is based on which

measurement properties are most important
to your work.
• e.g if it is very important to obtain accurate
area measurements (e.g., for determining the
home range of an animal species), you will
select an equal-area projection.
UTM map projection
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• Universal transverse mercator
• The globe is subdivided into 60 UTM zones
• Each UTM Zone is equivalent to 6°of longitude
wide and extends 84°North to 80°South
• These zones are identified by numbers and
cover the complete surface of the earth from
0°to 180°W and from 0°to 180°E

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 utm

• The origin of each zone is the intersection of

its central meridian and the Equator.
• Displacements in the x and y directions are
called UTM eastings and UTM northings
respectively, and they are given in meters.
• To avoid negative x and y values in the
southern hemisphere we have to add a false
northing value of 10,000,000m to the
northing (y) values and a false easting value of
500,000m to the easting (x) values.
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• UTM
• The UTM spatial referencing system requires
three sets of numbers
• – the easting
• – the northing
• – the Zone number
• Zimbabwe, zone 35 ,, 36

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