fetchRaCA: Get Rapid Carbon Assessment (RaCA) data

In soilDB: Soil Database Interface

Get Rapid Carbon Assessment (RaCA) data

Description

NOTICE: The SoilWeb snapshot of the RaCA data has been deprecated. The latest version of the data, including values measured by the Kellogg Soil Survey Laboratory, and supporting documentation, are available here: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/data-and-reports/rapid-carbon-assessment-raca.

Please use current RaCA distribution if you need lab measured SOC rather than SOC estimated by VNIR.

Download link on NRCS Soils Box site: https://nrcs.app.box.com/s/upx5xhlwis7saunfiysclfrhl5vxxudn

Gets Rapid Carbon Assessment (RaCA) data by state, geographic bounding-box, RaCA site ID, or soil series query from the SoilWeb API. This interface to the data was an experimental delivery service that does not include the latest soil organic carbon (SOC) measurements.

Usage

fetchRaCA(
  series = NULL,
  bbox = NULL,
  state = NULL,
  rcasiteid = NULL,
  get.vnir = FALSE
)

Arguments

series	a soil series name; case-insensitive
bbox	a bounding box in WGS84 geographic coordinates e.g. c(-120, 37, -122, 38), constrained to a 5-degree block
state	a two-letter US state abbreviation; case-insensitive
rcasiteid	a RaCA site id (e.g. 'C1609C01')
get.vnir	logical, should associated VNIR spectra be downloaded? (see details)

Details

The VNIR spectra associated with RaCA data are quite large (each gzip-compressed VNIR spectra record is about 6.6kb), so requests for these data are disabled by default. Note that VNIR spectra can only be queried by soil series or geographic BBOX.

Value

pedons:

a SoilProfileCollection object containing site/pedon/horizon data

trees:

a data.frame object containing tree DBH and height

veg:

a data.frame object containing plant species

stock:

a data.frame object containing carbon quantities (stocks) at standardized depths

sample:

a data.frame object containing sample-level bulk density and soil organic carbon values

spectra:

a numeric matrix containing VNIR reflectance spectra from 350–2500 nm

Author(s)

D.E. Beaudette, USDA-NRCS staff

References

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (2018). Rapid Carbon Assessment (RaCA). United States Department of Agriculture. Dataset. https://hdl.handle.net/10113/AA21139

See Also

fetchOSD

soilDB documentation built on April 3, 2026, 9:07 a.m.