Vector mapping urgently needed guidance

hi folks,
I m on a project doing GIS in webservices for viewing biomass spatially
To be frank i m a beginner to GIS, I learnt that the information i ll b geeting as input ll be vector images from a satellite ... I need to add on fns like zoom in zoom out ... zoom a particular selected radius etc.. Plz suggest me the whole working of it.
What is vector images n how do v convert them to jpeg files..
u can mail me at kulashekharan@gmail.com or post ur reply here
thanks a lot

 

Hey,

I would suggest using ARCVIEW by ESRI you can convert Vector images to .jpg
and use plug in extensions to quantify the biomass overlaying the map.

There is a STEEP learning curve-, but I think you can download a lite sample of it from ESRI.com to play with and do basic stuff.

 

If you school/work doesnt have Arcview, try this site http://opensourcegis.org/ for open source GIS products. Dont know much about them, but they are out there.

I just realized, are you sure that the images you are downloading from the sattelite are Vector images? They are usually static jpegs, tiffs or something of the like,which then can be transferred to a vector image by an arcview extension. Its been a while since I messed with this but thats what I remember off the top of my head.