Introduction to Terrain Analysis with
RSAGA: Landslide Susceptibility Modeling
Alexander Brenning, Donovan Bangs and Marc
Becker
02 February 2025
Introduction
RSAGA is a package providing access to geoprocessing and terrain
analysis functions of SAGA-GIS (System for Automated Geospatial
Analysis; Conrad et al., 2015), and R functions for
spatial data manipulation and applying functions to stacks of grids.
This coupling supports statistical geocomputing by which terrain
analysis may be executed in the familiar R environment. This tutorial
provides an introduction to RSAGA, with examples to guide initializing
the geoprocessing environment, accessing SAGA and ASCII spatial data,
function calls between RSAGA and SAGA, and RSAGA tools to apply model
predictions to grids.
This vignette illustrates the use of RSAGA for terrain analysis
following an application modeling landslide susceptibility in the
tropical Andes (Muenchow et al., 2012). The presence or absence
of landslide initiation at 1535 sampling points in the natural parts of
the perhumid Reserva Biologica San Francisco (RBSF) area are
entered as the response to terrain variables in a generalized additive
model (GAM). From a provided digital elevation model (DEM; figure 1)
(Jordan et al., 2005; Ungerechts, L. 2010) , RSAGA is used to
calculate the relevant terrain indices, transform grid data, and extract
values to a data frame for statistical modeling. The GAM is demonstrated
using package gam (Hastie, 2015), and model predictions applied
to the collection of terrain grids using RSAGA grid tools.
The RSAGA Package
RSAGA can be considered a collection of geocomputing functions in
three general components:
RSAGA core provides access to the SAGA
command-line interpreter, converting R commands to system calls to use
SAGA. The rsaga.geoprocessor function allows the user to
specify a list of arguments to be provided to any command-line SAGA
module. Navigating SAGA help and other module information can be
accomplished using rsaga.get.modules and
rsaga.get.usage functions, which print the console output
from various SAGA command-line calls.
RSAGA modules are a more R-convenient interface
of commonly-used SAGA modules, written as R functions. These use the
geoprocessor to create SAGA command-line calls, with an R interface
including help and usage.
RSAGA grid tools provides additional access to
geocomputing and data manipulation. These include moving window and
local grid functions, data import and export, and “picking” functions to
extract grid and shapefile data to an R data frame.
Initializing the RSAGA Geoprocessing Environment
Running the geoprocessing functions requires that SAGA is installed
and can be found by RSAGA. The rsaga.env() function creates
a list with system-dependent information on SAGA path, module path and
data directory. The function should be called with the path to the SAGA
executable:
The function tries to find SAGA in several default paths if no path
parameter is provided.
The object env may now be used to direct RSAGA functions
to use this specific version of SAGA. Version 8.4.1 will be
used for this tutorial by specifying env = env in functions
that use this SAGA environment.
RSAGA Function Calls
RSAGA interfaces with the command line interpreter of SAGA GIS. In
most cases, rsaga.* functions take specified arguments and
translate these to a system call that uses SAGA directly. For instance,
slope may be calculated from a DEM by the SAGA command line call:
saga_cmd ta_morphometry "Slope, Aspect, Curvature" -ELEVATION "C:\WORKSPACE\dem.sgrd"
-SLOPE "C:\WORKSPACE\slope.sgrd"
This is accomplished in RSAGA by running the geoprocessor
function:
rsaga.geoprocessor(lib = "ta_morphometry", module = "Slope, Aspect, Curvature",
param = list(ELEVATION = file.path(getwd(), "dem.sgrd"),
SLOPE = file.path(getwd(), "slope.sgrd")),
env = env)
where
lib is the library of SAGA modules,module is the function to be used,param is the list of parameters required by the command
line interpreter,env is a SAGA geoprocessing environment containing
information on SAGA and the path to SAGA modules
To simplify the call, geoprocessing can also be performed through
rsaga.* functions:
rsaga.slope(in.dem = "dem", out.slope = "slope", env = env)
These functions translate arguments to the geoprocessor function,
which in turn creates a SAGA command-line call to execute the module.
Options for the geoprocessor such as display.command and
show.output.on.console may be specified in these
functions.
Getting Help with Modules
We hope you find that SAGA modules with corresponding
rsaga.* functions have detailed help files that can be
called, e.g.:
However, you may wish to access a SAGA module that does not have an
RSAGA function. You may also wish to explore changes in module
parameters and deprecated modules between versions of SAGA. Available
libraries and modules can be found:
# A character string of available libraries:
rsaga.get.libraries(path = env$modules)
# A list of modules in a library:
rsaga.get.modules(libs = "ta_morphometry", env = env)
The usage, or command line arguments, of a particular module can be
found, printing a character string to the console that lists arguments
and choices for the selected module:
rsaga.get.usage(lib = "ta_morphometry", module = "Slope, Aspect, Curvature", env = env)
# Compare module parameters between versions:
rsaga.get.usage(lib = "ta_morphometry", module = "Slope, Aspect, Curvature",
env = rsaga.env(path = "C:/SAGA-GIS/saga_2.1.0_x64"))
rsaga.get.usage(lib = "ta_morphometry", module = "Slope, Aspect, Curvature",
env = rsaga.env(path = "C:/SAGA-GIS/saga_2.2.0_x64"))
Accessing Data with RSAGA
In most cases RSAGA will access SAGA .sgrd format grids
and ASCII grids. For this example, .rda-compatible version
of an ASCII DEM as a large list is provided in the
landslides dataset. This object is what would be created by
the RSAGA function read.ascii.grid(). Spatial sampling
points are included as a data frame with x and
y coordinates. These are loaded:
data(landslides)
data(dem)
data(study_area)
To use the provided DEM with SAGA through RSAGA, it can be converted
to the .sgrd format:
write.sgrd(data = dem, file = "dem", header = dem$header,
env = env) # write.sgrd and read.sgrd use SAGA, and should specify 'env'
Or to an ASCII .asc grid:
write.ascii.grid(data = dem, file = "dem", header = dem$header)
It is important to note that these functions, as with most RSAGA
functions, do not store grids in the R session; rather, the processing
takes place within SAGA. Grids in various workspaces can be accessed or
written by specifying the full path in the argument of that grid. For
example, in the rsaga.slope call above, reading the DEM
required for the SAGA calculation and writing the output slope model to
a different directory can be specified, e.g.:
rsaga.slope(in.dem = "C:/InData/dem", out.slope = "C:/OutData/slope", env = env)
If no path is specified, RSAGA will read and write grids to the
current R working directory.
RSAGA Terrain Analysis
With the DEM now as a SAGA grid, RSAGA may then be used to process
terrain and morphometric variables to be used, for example, in this
landslide analysis. Slopes and curvatures are calculated by the
Zevenbergen & Thorne (1987) method (figure 2):
# By individual function calls:
rsaga.slope("dem", "slope", method = "poly2zevenbergen", env = env)
rsaga.plan.curvature("dem", "cplan", method = "poly2zevenbergen", env = env)
rsaga.profile.curvature("dem", "cprof", method = "poly2zevenbergen", env = env)
# By one function that calculates each of the terrain parameters:
rsaga.slope.asp.curv("dem", out.slope = "slope",
out.cprof = "cprof", out.cplan = "cplan",
method = "poly2zevenbergen",
env = env)
Contributing area (carea) is calculated through
rsaga.topdown.processing using the multiple flow direction
method (Quinn et al., 1991; figure 2):
rsaga.topdown.processing("dem", out.carea = "carea", method = "mfd", env = env)
Grid Calculus & Functions
In some cases, it may be desirable to use a transformation of a
terrain variable for modeling. For example, the catchment area may be
better expressed once log-transformed. Such transformations can be
accomplished in RSAGA with rsaga.grid.calculus. The
formula in grid calculus is very flexible. Input grids are
represented in the formula by letters a, b,
etc. Any of the arithmetic operators and functions listed in
the help file may be used to calculate the out.grid. Here,
the formula ~ log(a) will calculate the logarithm of the
contributing area:
rsaga.grid.calculus(in.grids = "carea", out.grid = "log10_carea",
formula = ~ log(a), env = env)
Generalized Additive Modeling with Grids
RSAGA provides functionality for applying focal and local functions
to grids, such that model predictions may be mapped to the same grid
space as the input data.
First, the local functions currently support ASCII grids as input.
Convert the SAGA grids created by the terrain analysis to ASCII
grids:
rsaga.sgrd.to.esri(in.sgrds = c("slope", "cprof", "cplan", "carea"),
out.grids = c("slope", "cprof", "cplan", "carea"),
out.path = getwd(), format = "ascii", env = env)
Leaving the details of variable selection aside, consider a GAM in
which landslide occurrence (binomial) is predicted by:
lslpts ~ s(slope) + cprof + s(cplan) + s(log.carea)
Transformations such as the logarithm of the contributing area may be
applied by using the trafo argument of the
multi.local.function. This way, the transformed grids do
not need to be provided as input to the model.
my.trafo <- function(x) {
x$log.carea <- log10(x$carea)
return(x)
}
landslides <- my.trafo(landslides)
In this example, we use the gam function of the package
gam (Hastie, 2015). The model is built and saved to the
variable fit. This variable is made an argument of the
grid.predict function within
multi.local.function to apply the GAM method to the list of
grids provided.
library(gam)
fit <- gam(lslpts ~ s(slope) + cprof + s(cplan) + s(log.carea),
data = landslides, family = binomial)
multi.local.function(in.grids = c("slope", "cprof", "cplan", "carea"),
in.varnames = c("slope", "cprof", "cplan", "carea"),
out.varnames = "lsl_pred",
fun = grid.predict,
control.predict = list(type = "response"),
trafo = my.trafo,
fit = fit)
The result is an ASCII grid named lsl_pred (figure 3),
the argument provided to out.varnames. This grid is the
predict method of the GAM applied to each grid cell considering those
provided by in.grids.
Summary
We hope that this tutorial has provided you with a working
familiarity with the RSAGA package. RSAGA can be used to call SAGA
command line functions through the rsaga.geoprocessor.
Commonly-used SAGA functions can be called through convenient
rsaga.* functions, with documentation and usage available
in R through help().
Grids may be transformed by applying functions through
rsaga.grid.calculus. Grid data can be extracted to R data
frames using the pick.from.* functions. Model predictions
can be applied to a stack of rasters using
multi.local.function, with transformations to the input
data allowed through the trafo argument.
Through this functionality, SAGA terrain analysis can be coupled with
statistical computing, all within R.
A Note on Versions
As SAGA GIS is regularly updated, we strive to keep RSAGA functional
with as many SAGA versions as practicable. However, the release version
of RSAGA on CRAN may not be compatible with all versions of SAGA GIS.
Currently, RSAGA supports SAGA versions 2.3.1 LTS to 9.7.2. SAGA GIS
versions that were released after this package could work as long as no
major changes were made to SAGA GIS. Older version down to 2.0.4 might
still work but are not supported by all functions.
When a new version of SAGA GIS is released, RSAGA on CRAN may not be
initially compatible with this release. Development and pre-release
versions of RSAGA may be downloaded from the project Github page at: https://github.com/r-spatial/RSAGA
Please be aware that some modules and calculations may change or be
deprecated between SAGA versions. Where practical, warnings are issued
to alert users to changes in modules. The rsaga.get.usage
function may be used to access SAGA command-line help to explore any
changes between versions.
References
Conrad, O., Bechtel, M., Bock, M., Dietrich, H., Fischer, E.,
Gerlitz, L., Wichmann, V., & Bohner, J. (2015). System for Automated
Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA) v. 2.1.4. Geoscientific Model
Development, 8, 1991-2007
Hastie, T. (2015). gam: Generalized Additive Models. R package
version 1.12. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gam
Jordan, E., Ungerechts, L.; Caceres, B.; Penafiel, A. and Francou, B.
(2005). Estimation by photogrammetry of the glacier recession on the
Cotopaxi Volcano (Ecuador) between 1956 and 1997. Hydrological
Sciences, 50, 949-961
Muenchow, J., Brenning, A., Richter, R. (2012) Geomorphic process
rates of landslides along a humidity gradient in the tropical Andes,
Geomorphology, 139-140, 271-284.
Quinn, P.F., Beven, K.J., Chevalier, P., & Planchon, O. (1991).
The prediction of hillslope flow paths for distributed hydrological
modelling using digital terrain models. Hydrological Processes,
5: 59-79
Ungerechts, L. (2010): DEM 10m (triangulated from aerial photo -
b/w). Available online at http://vhrz669.hrz.uni-marburg.de/tmf_respect/data_pre.do?citid=901
from DFG-FOR816d
Zevenbergen, L.W., & Thorne, C.R. (1987). Quantitative analysis
of land surface topography. Earth Surface Processes and
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