Upcoming changes to R spatial packages

[nfahlgren]

Article: https://geocompx.org/post/2023/rgdal-retirement/

The packages rgdal, rgeos, and maptools are being removed from CRAN October 2023.

FIELDimageR does not use these directly (except for maptools, which can be removed after merging #43), but it uses sp, which has all of these as dependencies.

The article discusses the need to shift from sp to modern alternatives sf or terra.

FIELDimageR imports the following from sp:

sp::Polygon --> sf::st_polygon

sp::Polygons --> sf:: st_multipolygon

sp::SpatialPointsDataFrame --> sf:: st_sf

sp::SpatialPolygons --> sf:: st_sfc

sp::SpatialPolygonsDataFrame --> sf:: st_sf

sp::bbox --> sf:: st_bbox

sp::over --> sapply(sf::st_intersects(x, y), function(z) if (length(z) == 0) NA_integer_ else z[1])

sp::proj4string --> sf::st_crs

sp::spsample --> sf:: st_sample

sp::elide --> ?

Resources:

• sf docs: https://r-spatial.github.io/sf/reference/index.html
• terra docs: https://rspatial.github.io/terra/index.html
• Tutorial on transitioning: https://psfaculty.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/plant/AdditionalTopics_Transition.pdf
• sp to sf table: https://github.com/r-spatial/sf/wiki/Migrating