What is a GeoTIFF??

A GeoTIFF is a standard .tif or image file format that includes additional spatial (georeferencing) information embedded in the .tif file as tags. These are called embedded tags, tif tags. These tags can include the following raster metadata:

1. Spatial Extent: What area does this dataset cover?
2. Coordinate reference system: What spatial projection / coordinate reference system is used to store the data? Will it line up with other data?
3. Resolution: The data appears to be in raster format. This means it is composed of pixels. What area on the ground does each pixel cover - i.e. What is its spatial resolution?
4. No data value
5. Layers: How many layers are in the .tif file. (more on that later)

You learned spatial extent and resolution in the previous lesson. When you work with geotiffs the spatial information that describes the raster data are embedded within the file itself.

Data note: Your camera uses embedded tags to store information about pictures that you take including the camera make and model, and the time the image was taken.

More about the .tif format:

• GeoTIFF on Wikipedia
• OSGEO TIFF documentation

Geotiffs in R

The raster package in R allows us to both open geotiff files and also directly access .tif tags programmatically. You can quickly view the spatial extent, coordinate reference system and resolution of your raster data.

NOTE: not all geotiffs contain tif tags!

You can use GDALinfo() to view all of the relevant tif tags embedded within a geotiff before you open it in R.

# view attributes associated with your DTM geotiff
GDALinfo("data/week-03/BLDR_LeeHill/pre-flood/lidar/pre_DTM.tif")
## rows        2000 
## columns     4000 
## bands       1 
## lower left origin.x        472000 
## lower left origin.y        4434000 
## res.x       1 
## res.y       1 
## ysign       -1 
## oblique.x   0 
## oblique.y   0 
## driver      GTiff 
## projection  +proj=utm +zone=13 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs 
## file        data/week-03/BLDR_LeeHill/pre-flood/lidar/pre_DTM.tif 
## apparent band summary:
##    GDType hasNoDataValue                              NoDataValue
## 1 Float32           TRUE -340282346638528859811704183484516925440
##   blockSize1 blockSize2
## 1        128        128
## apparent band statistics:
##          Bmin       Bmax Bmean Bsd
## 1 -4294967295 4294967295    NA  NA
## Metadata:
## AREA_OR_POINT=Area

The information returned from GDALinfo() includes:

• x and y resolution
• projection
• data format (in this case your data are stored in float format which means they contain decimals)

and more.

You can also extract or view individual metadata attributes.

# view attributes / metadata of raster
# open raster data
lidar_dem <- raster(x = "data/week-03/BLDR_LeeHill/pre-flood/lidar/pre_DTM.tif")
# view crs
crs(lidar_dem)
## CRS arguments:
##  +proj=utm +zone=13 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs +ellps=WGS84
## +towgs84=0,0,0

# view extent via the slot - note that slot names can change so this may not always work.
lidar_dem@extent
## class      : Extent 
## xmin       : 472000 
## xmax       : 476000 
## ymin       : 4434000 
## ymax       : 4436000

If you extract metadata from your data, you can then perform tests on the data as you process it. For instance, you can ask the question:

Do both datasets have the same spatial extent?

Let’s find out the answer to this question using R.

lidar_dsm <- raster(x = "data/week-03/BLDR_LeeHill/pre-flood/lidar/pre_DSM.tif")

extent_lidar_dsm <- extent(lidar_dsm)
extent_lidar_dem <- extent(lidar_dem)

# Do the two datasets cover the same spatial extents?
if (extent_lidar_dem == extent_lidar_dsm) {
  print("Both datasets cover the same spatial extent")
}
## [1] "Both datasets cover the same spatial extent"

Does the data have the same spatial extents?

compareRaster(lidar_dsm, lidar_dem,
              extent = TRUE)
## [1] TRUE

or resolution?

compareRaster(lidar_dsm, lidar_dem,
              res = TRUE)
## [1] TRUE

Single Layer (or Band) vs Multi-Layer (Band Geotiffs)

You will learn this further when you work with RGB (color) imagery in later weeks of this course, however geotiffs can also store more than one band or layer. You can see if a raster object has more than one layer using the nlayers() function in R.

nlayers(lidar_dsm)
## [1] 1

Now that you better understand the geotiff file format, you will work with some other lidar raster data layers.