The underwater
R data package brings together datasets for submerged geographic features and place names that are presently dispersed. The aim of the package is to facilitate mapping and text mining of scientific and other literature for underwater features and place names using a tidy approach.
The package aims to assist researchers seeking to contribute to the evidence base for negotiations of a new international treaty on marine biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) under the United Nations General Assembly.
The package provides open access datasets for named underwater places from:
- The GEBCO Gazeteer with 4,084 place and feature names.
- The Interridge Hydrothermal Vents Database with 700 hydrothermal vents.
- Underwater features from the Geonames database coded U for Undersea. This dataset contains 14,513 underwater place names.
- Named seamounts from Seamounts Online http://seamounts.sdsc.edu/
The first version of the underwater package was written as part of the BIOSPOLAR project funded by the Norwegian Research Council (RCN 257631/E10) which aimed to map research and innovation in polar marine areas. The second edition of the package was written as part of the European Commission funded 'Study on Marine Genetic Resources Market Value and State of the Art of Commercialisation of Related Products in the Context of the BBNJ Negotiations'. The views expressed in the package are strictly the authors own and should not be attributed to the Norwegian Research Council or the European Commission.
The package is made available under the MIT Licence (CHANGE TO CC-BY)
ADD SUGGESTED CITATION
underwater
is not on CRAN and can be installed with devtools
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("poldham/underwater")
The datasets have different update schedules and an archive of each dataset is provided in /data
and can be called with the package.
- The GEBCO Gazeteer is rarely updated. The package archives a version of the dataset from 2023-07-17 and can be called using
underwater::gebco
or data("gebco").
gebco <- underwater::gebco
- The Interridge Hydrothermal vents database is updated infrequently. An archived version can be accessed using
underwater::vents
or data("vents").
vents <- underwater::vents
- The Geonames
undersea
data is taken from the GeonamesallCountries.txt
file data export dump and filtered on code U for Undersea (undersea). The geonames export files are updated daily. A reference set from 2018-01-01 is provided with the package. The geonames data can be accessed usingunderwater::undersea
or data("undersea").
undersea <- underwater::undersea
The raw data is not provided in a form that makes text mining easy. The data is not tidy and may contain punctuation or concatenation of names. Alternate names may also be provided.
Note that geographic lat long coordinates are provided in the vents and the geonames dataset. GEBCO data includes Point, Linestring and Polygons.
If you know of an open access dataset that could be added to aid in underwater mapping projects please raise an issue or make a pull request. Here are some of the other packages I have found so far.
- Seamounts
Seamounts data is from seamounts online at http://seamounts.sdsc.edu/ which is discontinued due to lack of funding). A set of zip files are provided and stored in data-raw
as is. The Seamounts Online dataset was coordinated by Karen Stocks at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and we are grateful to her and contributing colleagues for this valuable resource.
seamounts <- underwater::seamounts
robis
for taxonomic data from the Ocean Biogeographic Information Systemoce
for working with instrument data and a variety of mapping functionsoceanview
for visualizing complex oceanographic dataoceanmap
A toolbox for plotting 2D oceanographic datarnaturalearth
A package to facilitate interaction with natural earth map datarnaturalearthdata
World Vector Map Data from Natural Earch used in rnaturalearth
Marineregions.org brings together a lot of GIS datasets (such as maritime boundaries) that can use useful for mapping in R and other tools.
Quantarctica3 is a resource for those interested in Antarctica and the southern ocean and provides resources for use with QGIS.