8.1 Retrieving Open Data
Important sources of high quality datasets:
Most geoportals provide a graphical interface allowing datasets to be queried on spatial and temporal extent
Exploring datasets interactively on a browser is an effective way of understanding available layers.
Downloading data is best done with code.
One method is via direct download
download.file(url = "https://hs.pangaea.de/Maps/PeRL/PeRL_permafrost_landscapes.zip",
destfile = "PeRL_permafrost_landscapes.zip",
mode = "wb")
unzip("PeRL_permafrost_landscapes.zip")
= read_sf("PeRL_permafrost_landscapes/canada_perma_land.shp") canada_perma_land
Other methods are via API calls, either through httr
calls or simplified convenience packages