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R Maps

This document provides a tutorial on how to make maps in R. It outlines 6 steps: 1) installing necessary packages, 2) drawing basic maps, 3) zooming in, 4) adding colors and captions, 5) plotting data points on maps, and 6) adding legends. For each step, it provides code examples and explanations of how to customize map features like colors, fonts, and scales. The overall goal is to demonstrate how to visually represent geographic data on maps created with R.

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ajquinonesp
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
38 views

R Maps

This document provides a tutorial on how to make maps in R. It outlines 6 steps: 1) installing necessary packages, 2) drawing basic maps, 3) zooming in, 4) adding colors and captions, 5) plotting data points on maps, and 6) adding legends. For each step, it provides code examples and explanations of how to customize map features like colors, fonts, and scales. The overall goal is to demonstrate how to visually represent geographic data on maps created with R.

Uploaded by

ajquinonesp
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Making maps

Making maps in R
One way of visually representing data is to plot them on a geographical
map.

This gives you a first impression of skewed distributions.

The following tutorial is based on the one created by Michael Dunn,


available at

http://www.mpi.nl/departments/independent-research-
groups/evolutionary-processes/tools/mapping-with-r
Making maps in R
Making maps in R
Step 1: Install the non-standard libraries
On the MacOSX version you open the R application, select Package Installer from the
Packages & Data menu and choose Get List. When the list appears, scroll down to
and select maps and mapdata, tick the Install Dependencies checkbox (to be on the
safe side), and click Install Selected.
Making maps in R
In the Windows version...
Making maps in R
Test the installation

If R does not complain (seriously), you have installed the packages


Making maps in R
Step 2: Drawing maps: basics

map()
Making maps in R
Step 2: Drawing maps: basics

map()
map.axes()
Making maps in R
Step 2: Drawing maps: basics

map()
map.axes()
map.scale()
Making maps in R
Step 2: Drawing maps: basics

map.scale(x=-175, y=-40, relwidth = 0.1, cex=0.4)


Making maps in R
Step 2: Drawing maps: basics

map.scale(x=-175, y=-40, relwidth = 0.1, cex=0.4)

Determines position Determines width Determines font


of scale of the scale size of scale
Making maps in R
Step 2: Drawing maps: basics
Making maps in R
Step 3: Zooming in

map(xlim=c(-85, -35), ylim=c(-55,12))


Making maps in R
Step 4: Colors, captions
Colors:
map(xlim=c(-85, -35), ylim=c(-55,12), fill=TRUE, col="white", bg="darkseagreen")

Determines
background color

Determines the
foreground
(countries) color

Makes sure that the


col argument
applies to the
countries and not
just the borders
Making maps in R
Step 4: Colors, captions
Captions:
map(xlim=c(-85, -35), ylim=c(-55,12), fill=TRUE, col="white", bg="darkseagreen")
title(main="South America")
Making maps in R
Step 4: Colors, captions
If you want to change the color of the caption, e.g. because you want to have a black
background, you can do this by adding another argument to the title() function:
col.main=

Try the following:


1. set background color to black
2. set caption color to white
Making maps in R
Step 4: Colors, captions
Caption color: col.main=
map(xlim=c(-85, -35), ylim=c(-55,12), fill=TRUE, col="white", bg="black")
title(main="South America by night", col.main="white")
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map
1. Read the dataset languagesSA into R, assign it to a variable
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map
1. Read the dataset languagesSA into R, assign it to a variable

2. Plot the languages onto the map using the function points() with the arguments
latitude and longitude of your object (remember: $)
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

And now of course we can manipulate the points by giving


them another color (col=), another form (pch=), and - if
possible - another fill.
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

And now of course we can manipulate the points by giving


them another color (col=), another form (pch=), and - if
possible - another fill.
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

Thats all very fine, but we would like the colors to be


meaningful.

Display the content sof your object with str()


Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

Now suppose we wanted to display which languages had case marking and
which of the languages dont.
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

map(xlim=c(-85, -35), ylim=c(-55,12), fill=TRUE, col="white", bg="darkseagreen")


title(main="South America")

1. Add a new column to the data frame filled with the value "gray"
mySAdata$my.col = "gray"

2. change the values of the $my.col column to "red" where the value for the $CASE column is "Y"
mySAdata$my.col[mySAdata$CASE == "Y"] = "red"

3. change the values of the $my.col column to "blue" where the value for the $CASE column is "N"
mySAdata$my.col[mySAdata$CASE == "N"] = "blue"

4. use the $my.col column of data as the values of the col attribute
points(mySAdata$LONGITUDE, mySAdata$LATITUDE, pch=20, col=mySAdata$my.col)
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

Now maybe we want to make the


dots a little bigger
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

What about language names?


You can use the function text()
Type help(text)
Making maps in R

For x and y, we can use ....


For the labels we can use ...
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

What about language names?


You can use the function text()
Type help(text)
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

With these larger maps with data points


relatively close to each other, the labels do
not work very well. We can try to fix it by
using the iso codes instead
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

We may also choose to place the labels


directly onto the data points by losing the
pos= and adj= arguments
Making maps in R
Step 5: Plotting data points onto a map

We may also choose to place the labels


directly onto the data points by losing the
pos= and adj= arguments

...and change the font color to something


else with the argument col= within the text
function
Making maps in R
Step 6: Adding a legend

legend( Function legend() creates a legend

"bottomright", Determine the position of the legend

legend=c("Case", "No case"), Add names to the categories

pch=20, Determine form of symbol in legend

col=c("red", "blue"), Determine color of legend symbols

title="Presence of case", Add title to a legend

text.col="darkorange", bg="white") Determine some further graphical


parameters such as text color and
background color
Making maps in R
Ta-taaaa!
Making maps in R
Some things to play around with

Try and do the same for word order


Try and project plots for combinations of features with the
logical operator &
Once you have a dataset with latitude and longitude, you
can determine the range of the map you need by using the
functions range() or extendrange() which only display the
part of the map between the points in the dataset that are
furthest apart (range) plus a small margin (extendrange).

See (also for much more on coloring):


http://www.mpi.nl/departments/independent-research-
groups/evolutionary-processes/tools/mapping-with-r

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