This workshop will provide you with an introduction to manipulating raster spatial data using the R package terra. terra and its predecessor, raster are widely used for spatial data manipulation in R. No prior experience of spatial data is assumed, but this short workshop will not have time to delve into some important aspects of spatial data such as projections.
terra's predecessor raster had many of the same functions as terra, and I will mention how functions have changed or been renamed which might be helpful for people migrating from using raster. In the words of the creator of both packages: terra is simpler, faster and can do more, so definitely switch to terra if you are still using raster!
You will need the terra package installed, which can be done by running install.packages("terra"). If you have problems, there are more details about installing it here. I will also show how to make an interactive map with terra, which requires the leaflet package to be installed; install.packages("leaflet").
You will also need to have the data within this repository. You can do one of the following depending on how comfortable you are with Github:
- Fork this repository using the grey "Fork" button on this page. This will create your own copy of this repository which has all the data and code. More details on how to fork here
- Download the data to somewhere on your computer that you will be able to access during the workshop. The data are in zip file here and there is a "Download raw file" icon in the top right of the page which has an arrow pointing down. Make sure you know the path to the data files, e.g. "Documents/workshop_data/", so you can load the data during the workshop.
The workshop website is shown on the right hand side of this page