R & GIS in R


What is R and why use it?

There are several advantages to using R in your work, especially as the R ecosystem as exanded and R has become the default langauge for many scientists.

  • A language and environment for statistical computing and graphics
  • R is lightweight, free, open-source and cross-platform
  • Works with contributed packages - currently 12,325 -extensibility
  • Automation and recording of workflow (reproducibility)
  • Optimized work flow - data manipulation, analysis and visualization all in one place
  • R does not alter underlying data - manipulation and visualization in memory
  • R is great for repetative graphics

History of R


Why use R for GIS workflows?

  • Spatial and statistical analysis in one environment
  • Leverage statistical power of R (i.e. modeling spatial data, data visualization, statistical exploration)
  • Can handle vector and raster data, as well as work with spatial databases and pretty much any data format spatial data comes in
  • R’s GIS capabilities growing rapidly right now - new packages added monthly - currently about 180 spatial packages

Drawbacks to using R for GIS work

  • R not as good for interactive use as desktop GIS applications like ArcGIS or QGIS (i.e. editing features, panning, zooming, and analysis on selected subsets of features)
  • Explicit coordinate system handling by the user, no on-the-fly projection support
  • In memory analysis does not scale well with large GIS vector and tabular data
  • Steep learning curve
  • Up to you to find packages to do what you need - help not always great

An ideal solution for many tasks is using R in conjunction with traditional GIS software.

R runs on contributed packages - it has core functionality, but all the spatial work we would do in R is contained in user-contributed packages. Primary ones you’ll want to familiarize yourself with are sp, rgdal, sf, rgeos, raster - there are many, many more. A good source to learn about available R spatial packages is:

CRAN Task View: Analysis of Spatial Data


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