How to make 2-D plot some points with Latitude, Longitude and Third value in Matlab?

Hi All,

I have 3 vectors, v1=Latitude, v2=Longitude and v3=value (like deformation). I want to make a 2-D plot that shows each point with it's coordinate in lat and lon, and shows the third value as a colour for each point.

Could you please let me know what the best way is to do that?

Thanks, Zahra

[Kuifeng]

i think it appears like a 3D description. use plot3, or contour

 help plot3
help contour

[Zahra Sdi]

Thanks for replying,

plot3 and contour don't work for 2D plot,

I've found "scatter plot", it sounds good.

[Sivakandan Mani]

Hi Zahra,

I have similar kind of data, latitude, longitude and total electron content (TEC),

in the form of three arrays, I want to plot in 2D. I am unable to use either countour or pcolor becuase my TEC is only in the form of arry not in matrix.

Could you help me in this regards. I hope you might found answer for your trouble.

Thanks in advance,

Siva

[Dinibel Perez]

Hi!! I have a similiar problem... Could you solve it???? To plot TEC values

Answer 1

[Kuifeng]

 help contour

Answer 2

[Alireza Alizadeh]

First of all you need an origin for the locations. I assumed that the first point is located at (X,Y) = (0,0). Then, you need to obtain the distances and bearing angles of all points with respect to the the first point using the following functions:

if true
function bearing = Bearing_Angle(lat1, lon1, lat2, lon2)
% convert decimal degrees to radians 
lon1 = deg2rad(lon1);
lat1 = deg2rad(lat1);
lon2 = deg2rad(lon2);
lat2 = deg2rad(lat2);
bearing = atan2(sin(lon2-lon1)*cos(lat2), cos(lat1)*sin(lat2)-sin(lat1)*cos(lat2)*cos(lon2-lon1));
bearing = rad2deg(bearing);
bearing = mod((bearing + 360),360);
end
end

if true
function meter = haversine(lat1, lon1, lat2, lon2)
% https://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/haversine/
% convert decimal degrees to radians 
lon1 = deg2rad(lon1);
lat1 = deg2rad(lat1);
lon2 = deg2rad(lon2);
lat2 = deg2rad(lat2);
dlon = lon2 - lon1;
dlat = lat2 - lat1;
% haversine formula 
a = sin(dlat/2)^2 + cos(lat1) * cos(lat2) * sin(dlon/2)^2;
c = 2 * asin(sqrt(a)); 
km = 6367 * c;
meter = km*1000;
ft = km*3280;
miles = ft/5280;
end
end

Now, you can try the following code to obtain 2D locations and plot the points:

if true
Locations_XY = zeros(N,2);
Locations_XY(1,:)= [0 0];
for n = 2 : N
  theta_deg = Bearing_Ang(1,n);
  theta = (2*pi*theta_deg)/360;
  d = Dist(1,n);
  Locations_XY(n,:)= [d*sin(theta) d*cos(theta)];
end
figure
hold on
box on
for n = 1 : N
  plot(Locations_XY(n,1),Locations_XY(n,2),'sb','markersize',40,'markerfacecolor','c');
  text(Locations_XY(n,1),Locations_XY(n,2), num2str(n),'FontSize',12,'HorizontalAlignment','center');
end
end