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In R, I have a raster stack with 6 variables. I would like to extract the mean and maximum value of each variable at 300 coordinates within a 500m buffer radius and a 1km buffer radius.

In ArcGIS 10.2 there are problems extracting variables from buffers if there is any overlap. Is this a problem in R?

If not, how do you make buffers around a point in R? And how would I extract the mean and maximum value at the two scales surrounding each point?

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In your case, it is not necessary to create polygon buffers for your points. The raster::extract function has a buffer argument that will do exactly what you are after. 

library(raster)
r <- raster(ncol=36, nrow=18)
  r[] <- 1:ncell(r)
xy <- SpatialPoints(cbind(-50, seq(-80, 80, by=20)))

extract(r, xy, buffer=1000000, fun=mean)

For future reference the rgeos::gBuffer function will allow you to create buffers, and if the by.id=TRUE argument is used the buffers will not be dissolved into a single feature class. These buffers can be passed to extract withour issues of overlapping polygons.

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  • oh excellent. Would I need my rasters to be in an equal area projection? I could not have my rasters in degrees while doing this. Right?
    – I.Stirs
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:07
  • It is almost always preferable to have your data in a distance based projection however, no it is not necessary. In this example the reason the buffer distance is so large is that the default projection units in the dummy raster I created is degrees.
    – Jeffrey Evans
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:27

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