Getting Started with stacr
In stacr: Tidy 'STAC' Workflows for R

knitr::opts_chunk$set(collapse = TRUE, comment = "#>")
has_net <- stacr::has_internet()

library(stacr)

Overview

stacr wraps the rstac package with a pipe-friendly, tidy API. Every result is returned as a tibble — never a nested list. The package ships with a catalog registry of known STAC endpoints and supports any STAC API URL.

Key features:

Tidy output — all functions return tibbles (AD-02)
Catalog registry — browse Planetary Computer, Earth Search, USGS, and more
gdalcubes bridge — hand off search results to gdalcubes data cubes
Leaflet mapping — visualize item footprints interactively

Browse Known Catalogs

stac_catalogs() returns a tibble of STAC endpoints bundled with the package:

stac_catalogs()

List Collections

Query a STAC API to see what data collections are available:

stac_collections("https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1")

Search for Items

Search for specific items by collection, bounding box, and date range:

items <- stac_search(
  url = "https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1",
  collections = "sentinel-2-l2a",
  bbox = c(-84.5, 38.0, -84.3, 38.2),
  datetime = "2024-06-01T00:00:00Z/2024-06-30T00:00:00Z",
  limit = 5
)
items

Each row is one STAC item with an id, collection, datetime, spatial bbox and geometry, and a list of available assets.

Browse Items in a Collection

List items directly from a specific collection:

stac_items(
  url = "https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1",
  collection = "sentinel-2-l2a",
  limit = 3
)

Bridge to gdalcubes

For raster analysis, use stac_to_cube() to hand off items to gdalcubes. This requires the gdalcubes package and uses the raw rstac result from stac_search_raw():

raw <- stac_search_raw(
  url = "https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1",
  collections = "sentinel-2-l2a",
  bbox = c(-84.5, 38.0, -84.3, 38.2),
  limit = 10
)
cube <- stac_to_cube(raw, asset_names = c("red", "green", "blue"))

Map Item Footprints

Visualize search results on an interactive leaflet map (requires leaflet and sf):

items <- stac_search(
  url = "https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1",
  collections = "sentinel-2-l2a",
  bbox = c(-84.5, 38.0, -84.3, 38.2),
  limit = 5
)
stac_map(items)