What shall I expect after successfully running an InVEST model?. Confused with the output

Science, Research & Data
1

Hello
I successfully ran the SDR model. It gives me various outputs, such as avoided erosion and avoided export, I’m unable to interpret the maps. Also after converting the raster into vector the attribute table shows grid code. How can I interpret the results

image
image1908×1005 171 KB

Also what is the significance of gridcode here

2

image
image1920×1016 312 KB

This is when I convert it into vector. I cannot understand the map. The model has no error but this is the output. Is there any before hand analysis that shall be done before getting the result. And should i dissolve the gridcodes

3

Hi @shantanu -

We don’t usually convert the raster outputs to vector, we just use them as raster. If you do convert to vector, you’re likely to get a huge number of polygons, since the model output values are continuous floating point numbers, and you’ll end up with a polygon for each value. Actually, many raster to polygon GIS tools don’t work at all with floating point data for that reason, so I’m curious what you used to convert them.

If they were integer values, then theoretically the “gridcode” numbers would be the values of avoided erosion or whatever model output you’re working with. But these “gridcode” values are integer, which don’t look like correct model values to me. So you’ll need to evaluate the process you used to convert to polygon, and figure out how exactly it works.

~ Stacie