[GRASSLIST:3015] RE: [gislist] US cities and counties

Hello again,

As I mentioned, I am compiling corn yield data for the grain belt US based on county-wide data for about 14 states. Eventually I will need to plot these data to analyze yield spatial distribution. So I need to be able to assign these county production values to some location, probably the geographic center of each county.

One of the goals is to calculate a center of mass for production. The region of interest spans:

Lat: 35N to 49N
Lon: -104 to -80

The question is how to choose a projection that will allow me to calculate a reasonable (yet to be determined what will be considered reasonable) estimate of center of mass. I am considering Albers Equal Area, Equidistant Conic, Azimuthal Equidistant, and Two-Point Equidistant. (I am using GRASS, and I think TPE is not supported).

Thanks again for your help.

Martin

As I mentioned, I am compiling corn yield data for the grain belt US
based on county-wide data for about 14 states. Eventually I will need
to plot these data to analyze yield spatial distribution. So I need
to be able to assign these county production values to some location,
probably the geographic center of each county.

Not exactly your question, but you might try GRASS 5.7's d.vect.chart:
http://mpa.itc.it/radim/g51/d.vect.chart_bar.png
http://mpa.itc.it/radim/g51/d.vect.chart_pie.png

Hamish