maptools (version 1.1-6)

Rgshhs: Read GSHHS data into sp object

Description

If the data are polygon data, the function will read GSHHS polygons into SpatialPolygons object for a chosen region, using binary shorelines from Global Self-consistant Hierarchical High-resolution (Shorelines) Geography, release 2.3.0 of February 1, 2014 (http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/gshhg-bin-2.3.0.zip).

The getRgshhsMap function calls Rgshhs internally to simplify the interface by returning only a SpatialPolygons object rather than a more complex list, and by calling Rgshhs twice either side of longitude 0 degrees for values of “xlim” straddling 0, then merging the polygons retrieved.

If the data are line data, the borders or river lines will be read into a SpatialLines object. The data are provided in integer form as millionths of decimal degrees. Reading of much earlier versions of the GSHHS binary files will fail with an error message. The netCDF GSHHS files distributed with GMT >= 4.2 cannot be read as they are in a very different format.

Usage

Rgshhs(fn, xlim = NULL, ylim = NULL, level = 4, minarea = 0, shift = FALSE, 
verbose = TRUE, no.clip = FALSE, properly=FALSE, avoidGEOS=FALSE, 
checkPolygons=FALSE)
getRgshhsMap(fn = system.file("share/gshhs_c.b", package= "maptools"),
 xlim, ylim, level = 1, shift = TRUE, verbose = TRUE, no.clip = FALSE,
 properly=FALSE, avoidGEOS=FALSE, checkPolygons=FALSE)

Value

for polygon data, a list with the following components:

polydata

data from the headers of the selected GSHHS polygons

belongs

a matrix showing which polygon belongs to (is included in) which polygon, going from the highest level among the selected polygons down to 1 (land); levels are: 1 land, 2 lake, 3 island_in_lake, 4 pond_in_island_in_lake.

new_belongs

a ragged list of polygon inclusion used for making SP

SP

a SpatialPolygons object; this is the principal output object, and will become the only output object as the package matures

the getRgshhsMap returns only a SpatialPolygons object; for line data, a list with the following component:

SP

a SpatialLines object

Arguments

fn

filename or full path to GSHHS 2.3.0 file to be read

xlim

longitude limits within 0-360 in most cases, negative longitudes are also found east of the Atlantic, but the Americas are recorded as positive values

ylim

latitude limits

level

maximum GSHHS level to include, defaults to 4 (everything), setting 1 will only retrieve land, no lakes

minarea

minimum area in square km to retrieve, default 0

shift

default FALSE, can be used to shift longitudes > 180 degrees to below zero, beware of artefacts involving unhandled polygon splitting at 180 degrees

verbose

default TRUE, print progress reports

no.clip

default FALSE, if TRUE, do not clip output polygons to bounding box

properly

default FALSE, if TRUE use gContainsProperly rather than gContains, here FALSE because clip rectangle touches clipped objects, so they are not properly contained

avoidGEOS

default FALSE; if TRUE force use of gpclib even when rgeos is available

checkPolygons

default FALSE, if TRUE, check using GEOS, which may re-order the member Polygon objects with respect to the returned polydata data frame rows

Author

Roger Bivand

Details

The package is distributed with the coarse version of the shoreline data, and much more detailed versions may be downloaded from the referenced websites. The data is of high quality, matching the accuracy of SRTM shorelines for the full dataset (but not for inland waterbodies). In general, users will construct study region SpatialPolygons objects, which can then be exported (for example as a shapefile), or used in other R packages (such as PBSmapping). The largest land polygons take considerable time to clip to the study region, certainly many minutes for an extract from the full resolution data file including Eurasia (with Africa) or the Americas. For this reason, do not give up if nothing seems to be happening after the (verbose) message: "Rgshhs: clipping <m> of <n> polygons ..." appears. Clipping the largest polygons in full resolution also needs a good deal of memory.

References

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/, http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/gshhg-bin-2.3.0.zip; Wessel, P., and W. H. F. Smith, A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database, J. Geophys. Res., 101, 8741-8743, 1996.

Examples

if (rgeosStatus()) {
gshhs.c.b <- system.file("share/gshhs_c.b", package="maptools")
WEx <- c(-12, 3)
WEy <- c(48, 59)
WE <- getRgshhsMap(gshhs.c.b, xlim=WEx, ylim=WEy)
plot(WE, col="khaki", xlim=WEx, ylim=WEy, xaxs="i", yaxs="i", axes=TRUE)
NZx <- c(160,180)
NZy <- c(-50,-30)
NZ <- Rgshhs(gshhs.c.b, xlim=NZx, ylim=NZy)
plot(NZ$SP, col="khaki", pbg="azure2", xlim=NZx, ylim=NZy, xaxs="i", yaxs="i", axes=TRUE)
GLx <- c(265,285)
GLy <- c(40,50)
GL <- Rgshhs(gshhs.c.b, xlim=GLx, ylim=GLy)
plot(GL$SP, col="khaki", pbg="azure2", xlim=GLx, ylim=GLy, xaxs="i", yaxs="i", axes=TRUE)
BNLx <- c(2,8)
BNLy <- c(49,54)
wdb_lines <- system.file("share/wdb_borders_c.b", package="maptools")
BNLp <- Rgshhs(gshhs.c.b, xlim=BNLx, ylim=BNLy)
BNLl <- Rgshhs(wdb_lines, xlim=BNLx, ylim=BNLy)
plot(BNLp$SP, col="khaki", pbg="azure2", xlim=BNLx, ylim=BNLy, xaxs="i", yaxs="i", axes=TRUE)
lines(BNLl$SP)
xlims <- c(0,360)
ylims <- c(-90,90)
world <- Rgshhs(gshhs.c.b, xlim=xlims, ylim=ylims, level=1, checkPolygons=TRUE)
}