Summary and Setup

Lesson Authors: Leah A. Wasser, Megan A. Jones, Zack Brym, Kristina Riemer, Jason Williams, Jeff Hollister, Mike Smorul, Jemma Stachelek, Jarrett Byrnes (for COBALT version)

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.

Prerequisites

Data Carpentry’s teaching is hands-on, so participants are encouraged to use their own computers to ensure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow. To most effectively use these materials, please make sure to download the data and install everything before working through this lesson.

R Skill Level

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 for Geospatial Data lesson.

Geospatial Skill Level

This lesson assumes you have some knowledge of geospatial data types and common file formats. If you have never worked with geospatial data before, or need a refresher, start with our Introduction to Geospatial Concepts lesson.

Install Software and Download Data

For installation instructions and to download the data used in this lesson, see the Geospatial Workshop Overview.

Setup RStudio Project

Make sure you have set up a RStudio project for this lesson, as described in the setup instructions and that your working directory is correctly set.

This lesson is designed to be taught in conjunction with other lessons in the COBALT Geospatial workshop. For information about required software, and to access the datasets used in this lesson, see the setup instructions on the workshop homepage.