Introduction of GDAL, Terra and SF for geospatial analysis with R programming

Getting started with gdal

GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) is a free and open source translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. It is used by many GIS software i.e. QGIS, ArcGIS, and GRASS GIS and R.

As a core R use, working in climate change and hydrology, I need to process spatia-tempral data daily on daily basis. GDAL provide various functions for make life easy for daily GIS users, at the same time I wish, I never have to leave the R enviornment and rgdal was a good alternative but it is retired and removed from CRAN (See https://r-spatial.org/r/2022/04/12/evolution.html)

You can use GDAL in R with

• Use sf for vector data: It’s modern, efficient, and integrates seamlessly with GDAL.
• Use terra for raster data: It supports larger datasets and provides better performance than raster.
• Use system() for niche GDAL commands: When you need advanced features not directly exposed by R packages.

Now we’ll explore the gdal command line utility to started with basic geospatial operations and later in the blog discuss how just usng terra and sf sufficient for most of regular geospatial needs.