surfArea: Compute surface area from elevation data

In rspatial/terra: Spatial Data Analysis

Compute surface area from elevation data

Description

It is often said that if Wales was flattened out it would have an area bigger than England. This function computes the surface area for a raster with elevation values, taking into account the sloping nature of the surface.

Usage

## S4 method for signature 'SpatRaster'
surfArea(x, filename="", ...)

Arguments

x	SpatRaster with elevation values. Currently the raster CRS must be planar and have the same distance units (e.g. m) as the elevation values
filename	character. Output filename
...	additional arguments for writing files as in writeRaster

Value

SpatRaster

Author(s)

Barry Rowlingson

References

Jenness, Jeff S., 2004. Calculating Landscape Surface Area from Digital Elevation Models. Wildlife Society Bulletin 32(3): 829-839

Examples

v <- rast(volcano, crs="local")
x <- terra::surfArea(v)

rspatial/terra documentation built on Jan. 7, 2025, 6:27 p.m.