Software Resources

ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online are available to eligible UC Berkeley users through the campus Esri educational license. Extensions installed include Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst, Geostatistical Analyst, and Network Analyst. Log in at arcgis.com using your CalNet ID.

QGIS is a free, open-source GIS application available for Windows, macOS, and Linux with a large plugin ecosystem and broad format support. No license required.

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is an open-source GIS used for data management, image processing, spatial modeling, and visualization. Available for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Google Earth Engine is a cloud-based platform for planetary-scale geospatial analysis. It provides access to a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets, with APIs in JavaScript and Python. GIF offers beginner and intermediate workshops on Earth Engine.

ENVI is professional remote sensing software for visualization, analysis, and presentation of digital imagery, with particular strength in hyperspectral image analysis. The GIF hosts 13 licenses for ENVI and IDL, as well as the ENVI Feature Extraction tool (ENVIfx) for object-based segmentation and classification. Available on GIF lab workstations.

eCognition is a leading object-based image analysis (OBIA) and classification application. The GIF is a Trimble eCognition Center of Excellence and hosts 15 desktop licenses plus 2 eCognition Server licenses. Available on GIF lab workstations.

Erdas Imagine is industry-standard software for image processing, analysis, and pixel-based classification of satellite and aerial imagery. The GIF has 10 licenses available on lab workstations.

R has a rich ecosystem of spatial analysis packages for vector and raster data, mapping, and statistical modeling. Key packages: sf (simple features), terra (raster & vector), tmap (thematic maps), leaflet (interactive maps), shiny (web apps).

Python offers powerful libraries for geospatial data processing, analysis, and automation: GeoPandas (vector data), Rasterio (raster I/O), Shapely (geometry), Folium (web maps), ArcPy (ArcGIS scripting).

Lab workstations include several tools for ecological and landscape modeling:

• Maxent — maximum entropy species distribution modeling
• DIVA-GIS / BIOCLIM — free desktop GIS with species distribution tools
• Fragstats — spatial pattern analysis for categorical maps