Saving Spatial Data From R

Once we’ve new spatial objects in R we often want to save them so they can be used later or shared with others
Let’s start where we left off when cropping data

library(stars)
library(sf)
library(ggplot2)

harv_boundary <- st_read("data/HARV/harv_boundary.shp")
harv_dtm <- read_stars("data/HARV/HARV_dtmFull.tif")

harv_dtm_cropped <- st_crop(harv_dtm, harv_boundary)

bbox <- st_bbox(c(xmin = 731000, ymin = 4713000, xmax = 732000, ymax = 4714000), crs = st_crs(dtm_harv))
harv_dtm_small <- st_crop(harv_dtm, bbox)
harv_soils_small <- st_crop(harv_soils, bbox)

Writing stars raster data

To save data we use the write versions of the read functions
So to save the DTM that was cropped to Harvard Forest boundary we use write_stars
The first argument is the object we want to write and the second is the file name
The format of the raster will be determined by the file extension
To save as geotiff, which we’ve been working with, we’ll use `.tif

write_stars(harv_dtm_cropped, "harv_dtm_cropped.tif")

We can see that this worked by reading it back in

read_stars("harv_dtm_cropped.tif")

We can see this is the cropped data because it’s dimensions are < 150 x 150

Writing sf vector data

To save data sf vector data we use st_write
Again the arguments are the object to be written and the name of the file to write to
With the extension indicating the file type

st_write(harv_soils_small, "harv_soils_small.shp")

If we look in the Files tab we can see this created a full set of the files that make up a single shape file

Notes

Writing stars raster data

Writing sf vector data