MATLAB: Colorbar for categorical data

Question

I have a spatial, categorical dataset that I have plotted up using pcolor. The dataset contains latitude, longitude and vegetation type data. Vegetation type is an arbitrary number between 1 and 19 that corresponds to a vegetation label.

I am looking for a way to create a colorbar "legend" for this data.

At the moment, when I use pcolor and add a colorbar, I get a bar that goes from 1 – 19 with all the different colours in between. This colorbar means nothing because the data are not ordinal.

I am hoping to find a way to make little boxes for each individual color, and put a label next to the box. Something like the maps of Australia seen on this site http://www.environment.gov.au/node/22149

Is there a way to code this in Matlab, given that I have 19 different vegetation types, and putting labels next to the colorbar would be too busy?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Have you seen the demo for colorbar where they change the labels from numbers to some custom words? Try that:

surf(peaks(30))
colorbar('YTickLabel',...
  {'Freezing','Cold','Cool','Neutral',...
   'Warm','Hot','Burning','Nuclear'});