Introduction to GIS in R: Summary and Set-up
The episodes in this lesson cover how to open, work with, and plot vector and raster-format spatial data in R. Additional topics include working with spatial metadata (extent and coordinate reference systems), reprojecting spatial data, and working with raster time series data.
This lesson assumes you have some knowledge of R. If
you’ve never used R before or need a refresher, start with
our Introduction
to R lesson.
Download Data
The data and lessons in this workshop were originally developed through a hackathon funded by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) - an NSF funded observatory in Boulder, Colorado - in collaboration with Data Carpentry, SESYNC, and CYVERSE. NEON has been collecting data for 30 years to help scientists understand how aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems change. The data used in these lessons cover two NEON field sites:
- Harvard Forest (HARV) - Massachusetts, USA - fieldsite description
- San Joaquin Experimental Range (SJER) - California, USA - fieldsite description
There are four data sets included, all of which are available on
Figshare under a CC-BY license. You can download all the data used
in this workshop by clicking this
download link. Clicking the download link will download all of the
files as a single compressed (.zip) file. To expand this
file, double-click the folder icon in your file navigator application
(for Macs, this is the Finder application).
These data files represent the teaching version of the data, with sufficient complexity to teach many aspects of data analysis and management, but with many complexities removed, students can focus on the core ideas and skills being taught.
| Dataset | File name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Site layout shapefiles | NEON-DS-Site-Layout-Files.zip | A set of shapefiles for the NEON’s Harvard Forest field site and US and (some) state boundary layers. |
| Meteorological data | NEON-DS-Met-Time-Series.zip | Precipitation, temperature and other variables collected from a flux tower at the NEON Harvard Forest site |
| Airborne remote sensing data | NEON-DS-Airborne-RemoteSensing.zip | LiDAR data collected by the NEON Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) and processed at NEON including a canopy height model, digital elevation model and digital surface model for NEON’s Harvard Forest and San Joaquin Experimental Range field sites. |
| Landstat 7 NDVI raster data | NEON-DS-Landsat-NDVI.zip | 2011 NDVI data product derived from Landsat 7 and processed by USGS cropped to NEON’s Harvard Forest and San Joaquin Experimental Range field sites |
Contributors
This lesson was inspired by Software and Data Carpentry Workshops.
Acknowledgments
CDC, NCDC, DTRA, VT
This lesson is designed to be taught in conjunction with other lessons in the DTRA Workshop R and DTRA Workshop ENM.