I'm assigning an importance level to two different types of areas (3 for protected areas and 5 for umid areas) and have joined these two areas and created a third field on the attribute table to sum the importance. So, if there's somewhere with both a protected area and a umid area the importance would be 8, let's say. I would like to convert this shapefile into a raster and have each one of these fields become a band. Is this even possible?? I have used the rasterize tool but you only have one single band. My goal is to have the resulting importance of certain areas but keep how i got the importance, all in raster format.
1 Answer
I don't know of a single tool that will convert all fields to a single raster with separate bands for each field in one go. However, this can be done in multiple steps using a virtual raster.
1 - Rasterize the shapefile multiple times, one for each field you want as a band in the eventual raster, using each field as the input field each run. If your shapefile has too many fields for this to be relatively quick, you may want to write a script or put together a model in model builder.
2 - Use the 'Build virtual raster' tool and select all of your resulting rasters as inputs. Make sure the 'Place each input file into a separate band' option is checked. This last point is key as it will ensure that each of the input rasters becomes its own band in the resulting virtual raster.
3 - You can then export the resulting virtual raster to a permanent raster, with one band for each of the attributes in the original shapefile.
Give that a shot and let me know if that works for you.
