MODIStsp 1.3.3 is out – Speeding things up and squashing some bugs !

A new version of MODIStsp (1.3.3) is on CRAN as of today ! Below, you can find a short description of the main improvements.

Processing speed improvements

Processing of MODIS layers after download (i.e., scale and offset calibration, computation of Spectral Indexes and Quality Indicators) is now much faster.

As you can see in the figure, processing time was almost halved on my (not so fast) laptop. This was achieved by modifying all computation functions so to use raster::calc() and raster::overlay() (more on this in a later post).

Although speed is also limited by download speed and compression options, this will allow to save quite some time when working on large areas and with many MODIS layers.

Test mode

MODIStsp 1.3.3 also introduces a test mode. Although it was mainly developed to facilitate unit testing, it is also available to the user. Running:

MODIStsp(test = X)  # with X equal to a number between 0 and 6

will run MODIStsp expoiting different sets of processing parameters (available as JSON files in the Test_files subfolder of MODIStsp installation). We hope this will help us in more easily pinpoint and solve eventual problems signalled by users.

Bug fixes

Several bugs discovered after v1.3.2 release were fixed. We thank MODIStsp users for their feedback and help in improving the package ! You can find a list of the main fixes in our NEWS page.