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Spatial Tutorials Update

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A quick update. The spatial analysis libraries in the R Project have undergone a substantial change in the past couple of years. The details are laid out in the R spatial blog, but the crux of the issue is that legacy packages rgdal and rgeos have been retired, and packages that depend on them (such as raster and sp) will have been modified to use new dependencies, or replaced entirely. For the most part, the things we used to do with raster we now do with terra.

The transition was a bit rough, and for a while we needed to translate back and forth between terra and raster in our work. That should now be over, with all current packages using the new terra-based workflow.

I have already updated my quick mapping tutorial, and I’ve just updated my ecospat tutorial, now that ecospat has been fully updated to use terra too. Some of the other spatial tutorials you find here may not work properly, or at all, until I have a chance to review them. If you happen to find anything that isn’t working as expected, please let me know!