For nearly four decades, scientists have relied on Clark Labs’ TerrSet/IDRISI software to monitor and model the Earth’s systems, particularly in the areas of climate change impact analysis and predicting future land cover changes and their effects on biodiversity. In a groundbreaking move, TerrSet/IDRISI will soon be available as an open-access, free software version, starting on 2 December.
This significant shift toward greater accessibility was made possible by the recent merger of Clark Labs with the newly established Clark Center for Geospatial Analytics (Clark CGA). Ron Eastman, professor emeritus of geography and former director of Clark Labs, who now serves as a principal investigator and senior research scientist at the Clark CGA, emphasized that this opportunity marks a key milestone in the software’s history.
“This new, free version of TerrSet/IDRISI is the realization of a 37-year dream to make the software accessible to everyone, everywhere,” Eastman remarked, highlighting the long-held vision behind this initiative.
Microcomputers
The journey of TerrSet/IDRISI began in 1987 when Clark Labs launched IDRISI, the first GIS software developed specifically for microcomputers. Reflecting on its origins, Eastman explained, “We sought to meet the needs of scholars in the developing world. Our goal was to provide an accessible system capable of performing professional-level analyses with minimal computer resources. This necessitated a focus on algorithms that could operate efficiently in low-RAM environments, using only the resources typically found on home and office microcomputers.”
Over the years, TerrSet/IDRISI has been licensed for over 100,000 installations in virtually every country. The software has also been integral to many research projects at Clark University, where faculty members have utilized it to train both undergraduate and graduate students in geographic information science (GIS).
Climate change
The latest release, known as liberaGIS, introduces a range of updates and enhancements that further elevate the software’s capabilities. Among the key improvements is an upgraded Land Change Modeler tool, now equipped to support Jurisdictional and Nested REDD (JNR). This framework is vital for assisting governments in their efforts to protect and manage forests while also addressing the challenges of climate change. The REDD initiative, which stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation,” has been a significant focus for Clark Labs, who developed specialized tools for this purpose in collaboration with Verra, the leading standards organization for REDD projects.
In addition to this, liberaGIS includes a new Earth Trends Modeler tool designed for climate teleconnection analysis. This advanced tool enables researchers to identify recurring climate patterns across vast regions of the Earth, patterns that are often hidden by short-term variability. El Niño and La Niña are well-known examples of such climate patterns, causing dramatic weather changes worldwide, but many other patterns exist that this tool can help uncover.
Another major enhancement in liberaGIS is the introduction of a comprehensive suite of tools for raster editing. Satellite images and various environmental datasets are typically stored as raster images – detailed numeric matrices that are displayed as colored pixels on digital screens. However, maps created from these satellite images often require manual editing. Drawing on a decade of experience mapping shrimp aquaculture and its impacts on tropical mangroves for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Clark Labs has developed specialized tools to facilitate this intricate process, making it more efficient and user-friendly.
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