Module 0 · Welcome and Google Colab
Digital Soil Mapping
Setup
Open your first R notebook in Google Colab, load the training project and the course data, and check that everything works.
What you will learn
- open a SoilFER notebook in Google Colab with the R runtime
- run the Setup cell that loads the training project, the R packages and the course data
- save your work and know what happens when Colab resets
1. Open the check notebook
Open the check notebook in Colab.ipynb
Sign in with your Google account if asked. The notebook opens with the R runtime; you can confirm it under Runtime → Change runtime type.
2. Run the Setup cell
Click the first code cell and press Shift + Enter. The first time, Colab may warn that the notebook was not authored by Google: choose Run anyway. Setup takes about 1–3 minutes and:
- downloads the SoilFER Training Resources project to
/content/SoilFER-Training-Resources - installs the R packages the notebook needs (Colab installs ready-made binaries, so it is quick)
- downloads the course rasters and MIR spectra (≈1.2 GB) into
01_data/module1/training_data
3. Run the check
The next cells read the KSSL soil data and a covariate raster and draw a first map. If they run without errors you are ready for Module 1.
Good to know
| Your edits | Use File → Save a copy in Drive to keep your own version of a notebook. |
| Your results | Files written by the notebook live in the Colab session. Download what you need from the Files panel (folder icon on the left). |
| Resets | Colab resets after ~90 minutes without activity or when you close the tab. Re-run the Setup cell; it only takes a minute or two. |
| Memory | A free session has about 12 GB of RAM, which is enough for the Kansas training data. |
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