trans.mat creates a transition object usable by lc.dist to computes least cost distances between a set of locations. trans.mat rely on the function raster from package raster (Hijmans & van Etten, 2012. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=raster) and on transition from package gdistance (van Etten, 2011. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gdistance).
The transition object contains the probability of transition from one cell of a bathymetric grid to adjacent cells and depends on user defined parameters. trans.mat is especially usefull when least cost distances need to be calculated between several locations at sea. The default values for min.depth and max.depth ensure that the path computed by lc.dist will be the shortest path possible at sea avoiding land masses. The path can be constrained to a given depth range by setting manually min.depth and max.depth. For instance, it is possible to limit the possible paths to the continental shelf by setting max.depth=-200. Inaccuracies of the bathymetric data can occasionally result in paths crossing land masses. Setting min.depth to low negative values (e.g. -10 meters) can limit this problem.
trans.mat takes also advantage of the function geoCorrection from package gdistance (van Etten, 2012. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gdistance) to take into account map distortions over large areas.