Geospatial Data in R: Part 3, Raster Data

Raster data are used to represent geographic phenomena that are present and can be measured anywhere in a study area, like elevation, temperature, rainfall, land cover, soil type, etc. These data are a valuable resource for social scientists, planners, and engineers as well as natural scientists. This workshop will introduce basic raster concepts and methods for working with raster data in R. Participants will learn how to import and store raster data as spatial objects. We will explore methods for plotting rasters and manipulating raster data values. Basic methods of raster and raster-vector spatial data analysis will also be introduced. Additionally, the workshop will review coordinate reference systems and methods for reading, defining and transforming these with raster data..

Knowledge Requirements: Basic knowledge of geospatial data is expected. R experience equivalent to the D-Lab R Fundamentals workshop series is required to follow along with the tutorial.

Technology Requirements: Bring a laptop with R, RStudio and the following R packages installed: sp, rgdal, rgeos, raster, ggplot2 and tmap.