Raster Data Types

Many types including:

• Thematic (classified/thematic) data: land-use or soils data.
• Continuous data (temperature, elevation, spectral)
• Imagery / Pictures (scanned maps, drawings, etc.)

Most Common:

• Satellite Imagery and derived products
• Earth System Models (e.g. climate models)
• Other models

Raster data in the tidyverse

Raster data is not yet closely connected to the tidyverse, however:

• Some functions from raster work well in pipes
• Convert vector data to Spatial* form using as(my_vector, "Spatial") for raster-vector interactions
• Some early efforts to bring raster data into the tidyverse, including tabularaster, sfraster, fasterize, and stars (multidimensional, large datasets).

Raster Package

library(raster)
library(spData)
data(elev) #load fake data from spData package
plot(elev) #load fake data from spData package

Raster Data Structure

elev

## class       : RasterLayer 
## dimensions  : 6, 6, 36  (nrow, ncol, ncell)
## resolution  : 0.5, 0.5  (x, y)
## extent      : -1.5, 1.5, -1.5, 1.5  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
## coord. ref. : +proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0 
## data source : in memory
## names       : layer 
## values      : 1, 36  (min, max)

str(elev)

## Formal class 'RasterLayer' [package "raster"] with 12 slots
##   ..@ file    :Formal class '.RasterFile' [package "raster"] with 13 slots
##   .. .. ..@ name        : chr ""
##   .. .. ..@ datanotation: chr "FLT4S"
##   .. .. ..@ byteorder   : chr "little"
##   .. .. ..@ nodatavalue : num -Inf
##   .. .. ..@ NAchanged   : logi FALSE
##   .. .. ..@ nbands      : int 1
##   .. .. ..@ bandorder   : chr "BIL"
##   .. .. ..@ offset      : int 0
##   .. .. ..@ toptobottom : logi TRUE
##   .. .. ..@ blockrows   : int 0
##   .. .. ..@ blockcols   : int 0
##   .. .. ..@ driver      : chr ""
##   .. .. ..@ open        : logi FALSE
##   ..@ data    :Formal class '.SingleLayerData' [package "raster"] with 13 slots
##   .. .. ..@ values    : int [1:36] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ...
##   .. .. ..@ offset    : num 0
##   .. .. ..@ gain      : num 1
##   .. .. ..@ inmemory  : logi TRUE
##   .. .. ..@ fromdisk  : logi FALSE
##   .. .. ..@ isfactor  : logi FALSE
##   .. .. ..@ attributes: list()
##   .. .. ..@ haveminmax: logi TRUE
##   .. .. ..@ min       : int 1
##   .. .. ..@ max       : int 36
##   .. .. ..@ band      : int 1
##   .. .. ..@ unit      : chr ""
##   .. .. ..@ names     : chr ""
##   ..@ legend  :Formal class '.RasterLegend' [package "raster"] with 5 slots
##   .. .. ..@ type      : chr(0) 
##   .. .. ..@ values    : logi(0) 
##   .. .. ..@ color     : logi(0) 
##   .. .. ..@ names     : logi(0) 
##   .. .. ..@ colortable: logi(0) 
##   ..@ title   : chr(0) 
##   ..@ extent  :Formal class 'Extent' [package "raster"] with 4 slots
##   .. .. ..@ xmin: num -1.5
##   .. .. ..@ xmax: num 1.5
##   .. .. ..@ ymin: num -1.5
##   .. .. ..@ ymax: num 1.5
##   ..@ rotated : logi FALSE
##   ..@ rotation:Formal class '.Rotation' [package "raster"] with 2 slots
##   .. .. ..@ geotrans: num(0) 
##   .. .. ..@ transfun:function ()  
##   ..@ ncols   : int 6
##   ..@ nrows   : int 6
##   ..@ crs     :Formal class 'CRS' [package "sp"] with 1 slot
##   .. .. ..@ projargs: chr "+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0"
##   ..@ history : list()
##   ..@ z       : list()

Arrays with metadata

as.array(elev)

## , , 1
## 
##      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
## [1,]    1    2    3    4    5    6
## [2,]    7    8    9   10   11   12
## [3,]   13   14   15   16   17   18
## [4,]   19   20   21   22   23   24
## [5,]   25   26   27   28   29   30
## [6,]   31   32   33   34   35   36

Rasters are just arrays / matricies with metadata.

Cell Stats

cellStats(elev, stat = mean, na.rm=T)

## [1] 18.5

cellStats(elev, stat = quantile, na.rm=T)

##    0%   25%   50%   75%  100% 
##  1.00  9.75 18.50 27.25 36.00

Raster Data Memory

inMemory(elev)

## [1] TRUE

canProcessInMemory(elev)

## [1] TRUE

Raster does not try to load or work with large datasets in RAM. It creates temporary files and processes them in the background.

Map Algebra

Convert feet to meters

elev_m <- elev*0.3048
plot(elev_m)

Simple Filter

high_ground <- elev_m>8
plot(high_ground)

Focal

m <- matrix(1,nrow=3,ncol=3)
m

##      [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,]    1    1    1
## [2,]    1    1    1
## [3,]    1    1    1

elev_smooth <- focal(elev_m,m,mean)

Arbitrary functions

NA16=function(x) ifelse(x == 16,1,NA)
one_cell <- calc(elev,fun = NA16)
plot(one_cell)

Distances to non-NA cells

distance(one_cell)%>%
  plot()

Distance unit is meters if RasterLayer is +proj=longlat, map units (typically also meters) otherwise.

And much more

• aggregate (to coarser resolution)
• area (calculate cell area)
• buffer
• contour
• crop
• interpolate
• Moran’s I

ggplot

library(rasterVis)
gplot(elev)+
  geom_raster(aes(fill=value))

All ggplot functionality available

gplot(elev)+
  geom_raster(aes(fill=value))+
  coord_equal()+
  scale_fill_viridis_c()