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Get boundaries for an area of interest

get_boundary.Rd

Marine and land boundaries can be obtained. For marine boundaries, the mrp_get function from the mregions2 package is used to retrieve the boundary (e.g. an EEZ) from Marine Regions. For land boundaries, the package rnaturalearth is used.

Usage

get_boundary(name = "Australia", type = "eez", country_type = "country")

Arguments

name

character name of the country or region. If NULL all boundaries of type are returned. If an incorrect name is input, the user is given a list of valid names to chose from.

type

character the boundary type. Can be one of:

  • eez: Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ; 200nm). These EEZs differ slightly from the the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) definition because the archipelagic waters and the internal waters of a country are included.

  • 12nm: 12 nautical miles zone (Territorial Seas), defined in UNCLOS

  • 24nm: 24 nautical miles zone (Contiguous Zone), defined in UNCLOS

  • ocean: Global Oceans and Seas as compiled by the Flanders Marine Data Centre. Names are: "Arctic Ocean", "Baltic Sea", "Indian Ocean", "Mediterranean Region", "North Atlantic Ocean", "North Pacific Ocean", "South Atlantic Ocean", "South China and Easter Archipelagic Seas", "South Pacific Ocean", and "Southern Ocean".

  • high_seas: as defined by the UN Law of the Sea: "all parts of the sea that are not included in the exclusive economic zone, in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State, or in the archipelagic waters of an archipelagic State". Note that name and country_type are not relevant for this query: only all High Seas areas can be downloaded.

  • countries: country boundaries

More details on the marine boundaries can be found on the Marine Regions website, and for land boundaries, the Natural Earth website. Note that this function retrieves data from Natural Earth at the highest resolution (1:10m).

country_type

character must be either country or sovereign. Some countries have many territories that it has jurisdiction over. For example, Australia, France and the U.K. have jurisdiction over many overseas islands. Using sovereign returns the main country and all the territories, whereas using country returns just the main country. More details about what is a country via the rnaturalearth package vignette

Value

'sf' polygon or multipolygon object of the boundary requested

Examples

#Marine boundary examples:
if(require("mregions2")){
australia_mainland_eez <- get_boundary(name = "Australia")
plot(australia_mainland_eez["geometry"])

#this includes all islands that Australia has jurisdiction over:
australia_including_territories_eez <- get_boundary(name = "Australia", country_type = "sovereign")
plot(australia_including_territories_eez["geometry"])
}
#> Loading required package: mregions2



#Land boundary examples:
if(require("rnaturalearth")){
australia_land <- get_boundary(name = "Australia", type = "countries")
plot(australia_land["geometry"])

#this includes all islands that Australia has jurisdiction over:
australia_land_and_territories <- get_boundary(name = "Australia", type = "countries", country_type = "sovereign")
plot(australia_land_and_territories["geometry"])
}
#> Loading required package: rnaturalearth