Creating SpatRaster objects

A SpatRaster can easily be created from scratch using the function rast. The default settings will create a global raster data structure with a longitude/latitude coordinate reference system and 1 by 1 degree cells. You can change these settings by providing additional arguments such as xmin, nrow, ncol, and/or crs, to the function. You can also change these parameters after creating the object. If you set the projection, this is only to properly define it, not to change it. To transform a SpatRaster to another coordinate reference system (projection) you can use the function warp.

Here is an example of creating and changing a SpatRaster object ‘r’ from scratch.

SpatRaster with default geometry parameters

library(terra)
## terra 1.8.6
x <- rast()
x
## class       : SpatRaster
## dimensions  : 180, 360, 1  (nrow, ncol, nlyr)
## resolution  : 1, 1  (x, y)
## extent      : -180, 180, -90, 90  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
## coord. ref. : lon/lat WGS 84 (CRS84) (OGC:CRS84)

With other parameters

x <- rast(ncol=36, nrow=18, xmin=-1000, xmax=1000, ymin=-100, ymax=900)
res(x)
## [1] 55.55556 55.55556

Change the spatial resolution of an existing object

res(x) <- 100
res(x)
## [1] 100 100
ncol(x)
## [1] 20
# change the numer of columns (affects resolution)
ncol(x) <- 18
ncol(x)
## [1] 18
res(x)
## [1] 111.1111 100.0000

Set the coordinate reference system (CRS) (define the projection)

crs(x) <- "+proj=utm +zone=48 +datum=WGS84"
x
## class       : SpatRaster
## dimensions  : 10, 18, 1  (nrow, ncol, nlyr)
## resolution  : 111.1111, 100  (x, y)
## extent      : -1000, 1000, -100, 900  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
## coord. ref. : +proj=utm +zone=48 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs

The object x created in the example above only consist of a “skeleton”, that is, we have defined the number of rows and columns, and where the raster is located in geographic space, but there are no cell-values associated with it. Setting and accessing values is illustrated below.

r <- rast(ncol=10, nrow=10)
ncell(r)
## [1] 100
hasValues(r)
## [1] FALSE
# use the 'values' function, e.g.,
values(r) <- 1:ncell(r)
# or
set.seed(0)
values(r) <- runif(ncell(r))
hasValues(r)
## [1] TRUE
sources(r)
## [1] ""
values(r)[1:10]
##  [1] 0.8966972 0.2655087 0.3721239 0.5728534 0.9082078 0.2016819 0.8983897
##  [8] 0.9446753 0.6607978 0.6291140
plot(r, main='Raster with 100 cells')

image1

In some cases, for example when you change the number of columns or rows, you will lose the values associated with the SpatRaster if there were any (or the link to a file if there was one). The same applies, in most cases, if you change the resolution directly (as this can affect the number of rows or columns). Values are not lost when changing the extent as this change adjusts the resolution, but does not change the number of rows or columns.

hasValues(r)
## [1] TRUE
res(r)
## [1] 36 18
dim(r)
## [1] 10 10  1
xmax(r)
## [1] 180
# change the maximum x coordinate of the extent (bounding box) of the SpatRaster
xmax(r) <- 0
hasValues(r)
## [1] TRUE
res(r)
## [1] 18 18
dim(r)
## [1] 10 10  1
ncol(r) <- 6
hasValues(r)
## [1] FALSE
res(r)
## [1] 30 18
dim(r)
## [1] 10  6  1
xmax(r)
## [1] 0

The function terra also allows you to create a SpatRaster from another object, including another SpatRaster, or SpatRaster objects from the “terra” package.

It is more common, however, to create a SpatRaster object from a file. The raster package can use raster files in several formats, including some ‘natively’ supported formats and other formats via the rgdal package. Supported formats for reading include GeoTIFF, ESRI, ENVI, and ERDAS. Most formats supported for reading can also be written to.

# get the name of an example file installed with the package
# do not use this construction of your own files
filename <- system.file("ex/meuse.tif", package="terra")
filename
## [1] "C:/soft/R/R-4.4.2/library/terra/ex/meuse.tif"
r <- rast(filename)
sources(r)
## [1] "C:/soft/R/R-4.4.2/library/terra/ex/meuse.tif"
hasValues(r)
## [1] TRUE
plot(r, main='SpatRaster from file')

image2

Multi-layer objects can be created in memory (from SpatRaster objects) or from files.

# create three identical SpatRaster objects
r1 <- r2 <- r3 <- rast(nrow=10, ncol=10)
# Assign random cell values
values(r1) <- runif(ncell(r1))
values(r2) <- runif(ncell(r2))
values(r3) <- runif(ncell(r3))

Combine the three SpatRaster objects into a single object with three layers.

s <- c(r1, r2, r3)
s
## class       : SpatRaster
## dimensions  : 10, 10, 3  (nrow, ncol, nlyr)
## resolution  : 36, 18  (x, y)
## extent      : -180, 180, -90, 90  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
## coord. ref. : lon/lat WGS 84 (CRS84) (OGC:CRS84)
## source(s)   : memory
## names       :      lyr.1,      lyr.1,      lyr.1
## min values  : 0.01307758, 0.02778712, 0.06380247
## max values  : 0.99268406, 0.98156346, 0.99607737
nlyr(s)
## [1] 3

Create a multilayer SpatRaster from file

filename <- system.file("ex/logo.tif", package="terra")
filename
## [1] "C:/soft/R/R-4.4.2/library/terra/ex/logo.tif"
b <- rast(filename)
b
## class       : SpatRaster
## dimensions  : 77, 101, 3  (nrow, ncol, nlyr)
## resolution  : 1, 1  (x, y)
## extent      : 0, 101, 0, 77  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
## coord. ref. : Cartesian (Meter)
## source      : logo.tif
## colors RGB  : 1, 2, 3
## names       : red, green, blue
## min values  :   0,     0,    0
## max values  : 255,   255,  255
nlyr(b)
## [1] 3

Extract a layer

r <- b[[2]]