8.1 Retrieving Open Data

Important sources of high quality datasets:

Data.gov

GEOSS

Copernicus

NASA SEDAC

INSPIRE

Most geoportals provide a graphical interface allowing datasets to be queried on spatial and temporal extent

USGS EarthExplorer

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")
canada_perma_land = read_sf("PeRL_permafrost_landscapes/canada_perma_land.shp")

Other methods are via API calls, either through httr calls or simplified convenience packages