R Tools for Mesoscale Soil Hydrology

Authors

Vinit Sehgal, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College

Files

Description

The book R Tools for Mesoscale Soil Hydrology is a comprehensive guide designed to equip researchers and practitioners with practical skills in geospatial data analysis using the R programming language. This material is developed to bridge the gap between theoretical soil hydrology and practical geospatial data analysis using open-source tools. As mesoscale soil hydrology increasingly relies on satellite remote sensing and large-scale environmental datasets, the ability to process, analyze, and visualize such data has become essential. This guide introduces a suite of R-based tools and workflows tailored for soil hydrology applications, with a focus on soil moisture, land-atmosphere interactions, and climate variability.

This book integrates statistical computing with geospatial science and covers a wide range of topics including basic R programming, spatial mapping, raster arithmetic, vector operations, multilayer raster analysis, and parallel geospatial computing. It emphasizes hands-on learning with open-source datasets from platforms like NASA’s SMAP, MODIS, and LANDSAT, and introduces advanced techniques such as raster reclassification, zonal statistics, and data visualization using packages like ggplot2, terra, and tidyterra. It guides users through accessing and processing satellite remote sensing data, performing statistical and spatial operations, and visualizing results for hydrological and climatological studies. Special attention is given to reproducibility, computational efficiency, and the use of parallel processing for large-scale geospatial datasets.

Publication Date

2024

Recommended Citation

Sehgal, Vinit, "R Tools for Mesoscale Soil Hydrology" (2024). E-Textbooks. 5.
https://repository.lsu.edu/etext/5