Summary and Setup
Welcome to the Intro to Geospatial Raster and Vector data workshop for the Ocean Science Expedition Academy!
We have a fun workshop planned for you all.
In addition to class time on Tuesdays from 3-5p PT, we will offer an optional “Office Hours” time on Thursdays from 4-5p PT. These Office Hours will alternate between troubleshooting sessions where you can bring anything in R that you’ve been working on and would like some guidance with, and R lectures, where scientists will come and give a presentation about how they have used R in their work.
There will be a kick-off Office Hour on 2026-08-03 from 4-5p PT for help downloading R, RStudio, and the datasets required for this workshop.
We have the schedule for both below.
Class Schedule (Tues, 3-5p PT):
| Week | Date | Topics Covered | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 2026-08-04 | Introduction to R and RStudio, Project Management with R, Data Structures | |
| Week 2 | 2026-08-11 | Exploring Data Frames, Subsetting Data, Data frame Manipulation with dplyr | |
| Week 3 | 2026-08-18 | Introduction to Visualization, Writing Data, Intro to Raster Data | |
| Week 4 | 2026-08-25 | Plot Raster Data, Reproject Raster Data | |
| Week 5 | 2026-09-01 | Open and Plot Vector Layers, Explore and Plot by Vector Layer Attributes | |
| Week 6 | 2026-09-08 | Plot Multiple Vector Layers, Handling Spatial Projection & CRS | |
| Week 7 | 2026-09-15 | Convert from .csv to a Vector Layer, Manipulate Raster Data | |
| Week 8 | 2026-09-22 | Create Publication-quality Graphics |
Office Hours & R Lectures (Thur, 4-5p PT)
| Date | Class Type | Topics Covered |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-06 | R Lecture | Presentation by Dr. Arthur Barraza |
| 2026-08-13 | Office hours | Bring any-R-thing you need help troubleshooting |
| 2026-08-20 | R Lecture | Presentation by TBD |
| 2026-08-27 | Office hours | Bring any-R-thing you need help troubleshooting |
| 2026-09-03 | R Lecture | Presentation by TBD |
| 2026-09-10 | Office hours | Bring any-R-thing you need help troubleshooting |
| 2026-09-17 | R Lecture | Presentation by TBD |
| 2026-09-24 | Office hours | Bring any-R-thing you need help troubleshooting |
Instructors and Helpers
We also have a great group of instructors and helpers for this workshop:
- Echelle Burns (she/her), Project Scientist at Environmental Markets Lab at University of California, Santa Barbara
- Danielle Ferraro (she/her), Project Scientist at Environmental Markets Lab at University of California, Santa Barbara
- Jason Flower (he/him), Senior Project Scientist at Environmental Markets Lab at University of California, Santa Barbara
- Lennon Thomas (she/her), Senior Project Scientist at Environmental Markets Lab at University of California, Santa Barbara
Data Sets
Download the data described here and save it in a handy location. We will organize our folders during the workshop.
Software Setup
You can follow the instructions here to download R and RStudio