Photo of Andy Arthur

Andy Arthur

It seems weird to be thinking about Memorial Day Weekend already, 🇺🇲 but it's the weekend after the next one. But even if this weekend isn't perfect, I really am hopeful to get away just to spend some time in the wilderness and recharge my soul. 😎 Sunday still looks great, I am hopeful I can spend the balance of the day riding and exploring the countryside. 🚜

Download NYS Ground Level LIDAR Data using R

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This code will download ground-level LIDAR digital elevation model, the best available, for any part of state when you supply it with a shapefle. It queries the rest server with the dem indexes, and then downloads the relevant files, and joins them into one image.

library(tidyverse)
library(sf)
library(raster)
library(arcpullr)

shape_to_download <- read_sf('/path/to/shapefile_of_area_to_download.shp')

lidar.url <- tibble()

for (i in seq(2,14)) {
  if (nrow(lidar.url) == 0)
    lidar.url <- get_layer_by_poly(str_c('https://elevation.its.ny.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Dem_Indexes/MapServer/',i),
                                            shape_to_download, sp_rel='intersects'
    )                                
}

# download and merge all lidar titles that intersect
map(lidar.url$DIRECT_DL, \(x) {
  lidar.file <- tempfile(fileext = '.tif')
  download.file(x, destfile = lidar.file)  
  lidar <- rast(lidar.file)
}) %>% sprc %>% merge %>% writeRaster('output.tif')