Download and Retrieve Nightlight Data from NASA Black Marble

Downloads NASA Black Marble nighttime lights raster data for a given area of interest (aoi_sf), time period, and temporal resolution (daily, monthly, or annual). Internally wraps bm_raster from the blackmarbler package (World Bank), which handles tile discovery, download, mosaicing, and cloud/quality masking automatically.

The result is a SpatRaster cropped and masked to the AOI, ready to be passed directly to extract_num_raster or any terra-based workflow in paisaje.

Usage

get_nightlight_data(
  aoi_sf,
  year,
  month = NULL,
  product_id = "VNP46A3",
  bearer,
  variable = NULL,
  quality_flag_rm = NULL,
  destination_dir = NULL,
  timeout = 1200
)

Arguments

aoi_sf

`sf`. An sf object defining the area of interest (AOI). Can be any polygon geometry (country outline, H3 grid extent, custom boundary). The raster will be cropped and masked to this extent.

year

`numeric` or `character`. The year of interest (e.g., 2022). Used together with month to build the date argument passed to bm_raster.

month

`numeric` or NULL. Month of the year (1–12). Required when product_id = "VNP46A3" (monthly composite). Ignored for annual products ("VNP46A4"). Default is NULL.

product_id

`character`. NASA Black Marble product identifier. Available options:

• "VNP46A1" — Daily, at-sensor radiance (500 m).

• "VNP46A2" — Daily, BRDF-corrected and gap-filled (500 m). Default variable: Gap_Filled_DNB_BRDF-Corrected_NTL.

• "VNP46A3" — Monthly composite, snow-free (500 m). Default variable: NearNadir_Composite_Snow_Free.

• "VNP46A4" — Annual composite, snow-free (500 m). Default variable: NearNadir_Composite_Snow_Free.

Default: "VNP46A3" (monthly).

bearer

`character`. NASA LAADS DAAC bearer token required for authentication. Obtain a free token at https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/ under Login > Generate Token. It is strongly recommended to store this token as an environment variable (e.g., NASA_BEARER) and retrieve it with Sys.getenv("NASA_BEARER") rather than hardcoding it in scripts.

variable

`character` or NULL. Specific variable (layer) to extract from the HDF5 product. If NULL (default), the package default for each product_id is used (see parameter description above). Pass "" to trigger an informative error listing all valid variable names.

quality_flag_rm

`integer vector` or NULL. Quality flag values for which pixels will be set to NA. Lower quality values can be removed to reduce noise. Default is NULL (no quality filtering).

destination_dir

`character` or NULL. Directory where the output .tif and intermediate HDF5 tiles will be cached. If NULL (default), the system's temporary directory (tempdir) is used and a message is emitted.

timeout

`numeric`. Maximum time in seconds allowed for HTTP downloads. Temporarily overrides getOption("timeout") and restores the original value on exit. Default: 1200 (20 minutes).

Value

A SpatRaster object cropped and masked to aoi_sf, containing the requested nighttime lights variable. Layer name reflects the product and date. Also written to destination_dir as a .tif. Returns NULL invisibly if an error occurs, with an informative message.

Details

## Why NASA Black Marble over EOG? The previous implementation downloaded a global monthly raster (~500 MB) from the Earth Observation Group (EOG, Colorado School of Mines) via HTML scraping, regardless of the AOI size. NASA Black Marble improves on this in several ways:

• AOI-aware: only downloads the MODIS/VIIRS tiles that intersect aoi_sf, dramatically reducing download size for regional studies.

• Higher scientific quality: applies lunar irradiance modeling, atmospheric correction, BRDF correction, and cloud masking at the algorithm level (not post-hoc).

• Daily, monthly, and annual products under a unified interface.

• Stable API: accesses NASA LAADS DAAC via token-authenticated httr2 requests — no fragile HTML scraping.

• Resolution: 500 m (vs. ~750 m for the EOG monthly_notile product).

## Bearer token setup The NASA bearer token is free but required. Recommended setup:

# In .Renviron (open with usethis::edit_r_environ()):
NASA_BEARER=your_token_here

# Then in your script:
bearer <- Sys.getenv("NASA_BEARER")

## Integration with paisaje The returned SpatRaster is ready to be passed directly to extract_num_raster to summarize nightlight values per polygon or H3 hexagon grid.

References

Román, M. O., et al. (2018). NASA's Black Marble nighttime lights product suite. Remote Sensing of Environment, 210, 113–143. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2018.03.017

Marty, R., & Vicente, G. S. (2024). blackmarbler: Georeferenced Rasters and Statistics of Nighttime Lights from NASA Black Marble. R package v0.2.5. World Bank. https://worldbank.github.io/blackmarbler/

See also

• bm_raster — underlying download function.

• extract_num_raster — extract area-weighted means per polygon.

• get_worldclim_historic — analogous function for climate data.

• get_esa_10m — analogous function for land cover data.

• NASA Black Marble portal: https://blackmarble.gsfc.nasa.gov/

• LAADS DAAC token: https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
library(sf)

# Use Costa Rica outline (included in paisaje)
aoi <- paisaje::cr_outline_c

# Bearer token from environment variable (recommended)
bearer <- Sys.getenv("NASA_BEARER")

# Monthly composite — March 2022
ntl <- get_nightlight_data(
  aoi_sf     = aoi,
  year       = 2022,
  month      = 3,
  product_id = "VNP46A3",
  bearer     = bearer
)

# Annual composite — 2021
ntl_anual <- get_nightlight_data(
  aoi_sf     = aoi,
  year       = 2021,
  product_id = "VNP46A4",
  bearer     = bearer
)

# Extract mean nightlight per H3 hexagon
h7     <- paisaje::get_h3_grid(aoi, res = 7)
h7_ntl <- extract_num_raster(ntl, h7)
} # }