RESULTS

Data Acquisition and Translation

There are two basic components of the data used for the analysis. One is the DEM of puget sound at 30m resolution. It has ArcInfo grid as its native form. Another is a shorezone inventory database of Washington State from the state's Department of Ecology. It has shorezone surveys of all the coastlines of Washington state with various vector line layers that describe both biological and physical characteristic of the state's coastlines. Biological data include coverages of vegetation on the coastline ranging from invasive species (Sargassum ) to kelps, common seagrass and eelgrass (Zostera spp.). The physical substrate data include rock, gravel, rock/gravel/sand, gravel/sand, sand and fine mud. The native format of these files are in ESRI's shapefile. Conversion of data from ESRI format to IDRISI proved to be more than tricky. There are various issues that affect the final outcome of the data quality in IDRISI form. The fundamental issues relating to projection and pixel resolution was difficult to grasp due to somewhat poor data documentations. As result, there have been some guess works in the process of data conversion. Further more, there are the usual difficulties surrounding the conversion between ESRI and IDIRSI vector form.