The package FedData has gone through software review and is now part of rOpenSci. FedData includes functions to automate downloading geospatial data available from several federated data sources (mainly sources maintained by the US Federal government).
Currently, the package enables extraction from six datasets:
The National Elevation Dataset (NED) digital elevation models (1 and 1⁄3 arc-second; USGS) The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) (USGS) The Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database from the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS), which is led by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) under the USDA, The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), coordinated by National Climatic Data Center at NOAA, The Daymet gridded estimates of daily weather parameters for North America, version 3, available from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC), and The International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB), coordinated by National Climatic Data Center at NOAA.