Workshop: Vector spatial data in R [Wednesday February 10]

Next week’s event will be a workshop, not a roundtable. The workshop will be led by Casey O’ Hara at NCEAS. We will have facilities for remote participation for those who’d like and/or if we run out of space at the NCEAS conference room.
Please RSVP to attend and get follow-up emails.
Vector spatial data in R

GIS is a useful tool for viewing spatial data and creating maps, but R can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to analyzing your spatial data.  We will focus on vector spatial data in this workshop (polygons, lines, points) but also touch on raster spatial data, building upon the raster workshop led by Jamie last fall.  Please RSVP by filling out this google form, so we can send you a follow up e-mail with further instructions to set up your laptop.  Newbies and experts are all welcome.

 
Some things we will look at; if you have specific questions please feel free to send them in advance (e-mail or on the RSVP form):

  • reading and writing vector spatial data (shapefiles and geodatabases)
  • projecting and displaying vector spatial data (incl. mapping in ggplot)
  • understanding the structure of R spatial polygon objects so we can take them apart, analyze them, modify them, and put them back together again.
  • using basic geoprocessing tools in R to manipulate geometry, e.g. intersect, difference, area, buffer, etc.
  • working with polygons and rasters together
  • checking and repairing geometries (beware of orphan holes!)

Please bring a laptop if you can, so we can work through the examples together.  You can find the materials (scripts, data, and workshop notes) here: https://github.com/eco-data-science/spatial_analysis2_R.  Clone or fork the repository (if you’re a GitHub person) or download the zip file (button on right, above the list of files).

We’ll send a followup e-mail to attendees with a to-do list of things to set up ahead of time, including software and R packages you might need to install or update.  Please make sure to RSVP!

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