I haven’t worked with raster or spatial polygon data in R much before, but I want to create maps to show the results of a spatiotemporal model. Specifically, I want to depict the changes in abundance of fish in a stream network over time and space. I decided to play around with various packages for manipulating spatial data and then using base `plot` and `ggplot2` functions to make the maps. Rather than post the code and output here, it was easier to publish it to RPubs and link to it: http://rpubs.com/djhocking/155740
Fish abundance in a stream network
The scale, colors, projection, and background will have to be adjusted based on the purpose of the map, but hopefully the code and explanations will help people get started. This was intended as a learning tool for me, rather than strictly as a tutorial, but I figured I would share in case it proved useful to others.
Here’s some links to additional information I found useful along the way:
Add a north arrow and scale bar
ggplot2 mapping in R by Zev Ross (he has tons of great info on his site!!!)
raserVis – haven’t tried yet but looks very useful
Raster data in R by NEON
Daniel J. Hocking 