Performing raster analyses with GRASS

The GRASS (short form for Geographical Resources Analysis Support System) environment represents one of the first available open source GIS options. It has a long history of providing powerful geospatial tools that were often overlooked because the GRASS interface and data organization requirements weren't as intuitive as other—often proprietary—options. The integration of GRASS algorithms within the processing toolbox provides access to these powerful tools within an intuitive GUI-based interface.

To explore the types of GRASS algorithms available through the toolbox, we will work through a series of hypothetical situations and perform the following analyses:

• Calculating a least-cost path across a landscape

• Evaluating a viewshed

Please make sure that you have downloaded, unzipped, and added the necessary data to QGIS and set the project CRS value to EPSG: 26710. We need to organize this data so that the elevation layer is at the bottom of the data layer...