Data & Resources
I have two un-updatable priors: 1) anything can be done on R, and 2) spatial analysis is the only type of research that's genuinely fun to do. Check out these data resources, maybe you'll become a convert too 😎.
Development
Global Nighttime Light (Low-light Area Adjusted), 1992 - 2022 (Tang et al., 2025)
Disasters
Global Wildfire Burned Area, 1950 - 2021 (Gincheva et al., 2024)
U.S. Drought Model (Erhardt et al., 2024)
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Education
U.S. Higher Education Curricula Course-Skill Atlas, 2000 - 2017 (Sabet et al., 2024)
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Energy
Chinese Monthly Electricity Consumption, 2012 - 2019 (Yan et al., 2024)
U.S. Hourly Wind and Solar Power Production, 1980 - 2022 (Campbell et al., 2024)
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Health
U.S. Human Pathogen Nucleic Acids in Wastewater, 2022 - 2024 (Boehm et al., 2024)
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Land Use
Global Wetland, 2000 - 2022 (Zhang et al., 2024)
U.S. Gridded Land Use,1940 - 2015 (Shane et al., 2022)
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Urban Land-Use
Chinese Urban Blue-Green-Grey Landscape at 3m resolution (Xu and Zhao, 2024)
European Population, Land-use and Economic estimates, 1870 - 2020 (Paprotny & Mengel, 2023)
NYC Inventory of Tree Canopy (Ma et al., 2023)
GlobalBuildingAtlas at 3 m × 3 m Resolution, 2022 (Zhu et al., 2025)
Global Fractional Tree Cover, 2000 - 2021 (Liu et al., 2024)
Global Three-dimensional Building Footprint, 2020 (Che et al., 2024)
Global Urban Green Space, 2019 - 2022 (Wu et al., 2024)
U.S. City-Defined Neighborhood Boundaries, 2025 (Ansolabehere et al., 2025)
U.S. Commuting Zone, 2020 (Fowler, 2024)
U.S. Settlement Evolution, 1810 - 2020 (Ahn et al., 2024)
U.S. Urban Local Climate Zone, 1986 - 2020 (Qi et al., 2024)
U.S. Zoning Codes, 2024 (Fan et al.) Available soon.
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Natural Resources
Chinese Ground-Mounted Solar PV Plants, 2020 (Feng et al., 2024)
Global Surface Water Development, 2003 - 2022 (Klein et al., 2024)
Global Inventory of Solar PV panels (Kruitwagen et al., 2021)
Global Inventory of Mines (Maus et al., 2022)
Global Inventory of Offshore Wind Turbines (Zhang et al., 2021)
U.S. Solar PV Facilities in Western Interconnection (Hu et al. 2025)
U.S. Large-Scale Ground-Mounted Solar PV panels (Fujita et al., 2023)
U.S. Groundwater Wells, 1763 - 2023 (Lin et al., 2024)
U.S. Water Rights (Lisk et al., 2024)
U.S. Total Irrigation by Crop, 2008 - 2020 (Ruess et al., 2024)
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Political Economy
U.S. Local Public Meeting Records, 2006 - 2022 (Barari and Simko, 2024)
U.S. Statewide Partisan Election Results, 2016 - 2020 (Amos et al., 2024)
U.S. Local Elections, 1989 - 2021 (Benedictis-Kessner et al., 2024)
Pollution
Brazilian Contaminated Sites (Samlani et al., 2024)
Chinese Daily Average Aircraft PM2.5 Pollution, 2006 - 2023 (Cui et al., 2024)
Chinese City Building Emission, 2015 - 2020 (Yu et al., 2024)
Chinese City Livestock Methane Emission, 2010 - 2020 (Du et al., 2024)
Chinese City Heavy Metal Emission, 2015 - 2020 (Dong et al., 2024)
Weather/Climate
Chinese All-sky Daily Air Temperature, 2003 - 2022 (Wang et al., 2024)
Chinese Daily Surface Air Temperature, 1840 - 1950 (Zheng et al., 2024)
Chinese Temperature Index, 1368 - 1911 (Wang et al., 2024)
Global Human Thermal Stress Metrics, 2000 - 2023 (Jian et al., 2024)
Global Climate Change Belief Survey, 2022 - 2023 (Doell et al., 2024)
Northern Hemisphere Daily Air/Ground Temperature & Snow depth, 1960 - 2021 (Tran et al., 2024)
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Spatial Analysis on R
Guide to Combine Spatial Data with the U.S. Census Data (Walker, 2023)
U.S. Spatial Wealth Inequality, 1960 - 2020 (Suss et al., 2024)
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Machine Learning Model for Spatial Analysis
Guide to use Meta's Segment Anything Model (Wu, 2024)