StarSpan is designed to bridge the raster and vector worlds of spatial analysis using fast algorithms for pixel level extraction from geometry features (points, lines, polygons). StarSpan generates databases of extracted pixel values (from one or a set of raster images), fused with the database attributes from the vector files. This allows a user to do statistical analysis of the pixel vs. attribute data in many existing packages and can greatly speed up classification training and testing. See the documentation for more details about commands, operations, and options.

This development has been possible thanks to California State Department of Boating and Waterways.

StarSpan runs on any Unix flavor (including MacOs X) and Windows, although it has been mainly tested on Linux and MacOS X. StarSpan's core program is run from the command line. An experimental Java-based graphical user interface (GUI) and an experimental Windows binary distribution are also available for testing purposes.

This is an open source software project and you are welcome to use the tool and contribute to the project. Please read the copyright agreement.

Please cite the software in published papers as follows (modifying the formatting as appropriate):

Rueda, C.A., Greenberg, J.A., and Ustin, S.L. StarSpan: A Tool for Fast Selective Pixel Extraction from Remotely Sensed Data. (2005). Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing (CSTARS), University of California at Davis, Davis, CA.