Introduction to Mapping Geographic Data
Content for Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Now that we’re getting into actual operations on spatial data and beginning to actually modify the geometries and attributes of spatial data, it’ll be important for you to be able to visualize the results. At this point, we’ll be focusing on rough visualization as a way of “gut-checking” the outcomes of your code. We’ll focus more on creating informative, aesthetically pleasing, publication quality visualizations.
Readings
Ch.3 Tmap in a nutshell from “Elegant and informative maps with tmap” by Martijn Tennekes and Jakub Nowosad provides a great “quick start” for using the
tmappackage for visualizing spatial data.Making maps with
Rby (Lovelace et al. 2019) introduces thetmappackage for making nice maps with relatively minimal syntax.Making maps in
Rby Emily Burchfield illustrates some quick mapping syntax with baseplot,ggplot, andtmap. For now, just focus on the baseplotandtmapsections as we’ll take on the ggplot stuff later in the course.
Objectives
By the end of today, you should be able to:
Describe the basic components of data visualization as a foundation for mapping syntax
Understand layering in both base
plotandtmapMake basic plots of multiple spatial data objects
Slides
The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.