R+natural earth + bounding box and equator missing

Question

Please have a look at the reprex at the end of this post. I should say that because of an issue with the ne_download function, the reprex requires the development version of rnaturalearth. See

R+natural earth: download bounding box fails

The code below works, but it seems to me that, with respect to the past, the equatorial line and all the latitude line have disappeared. Is there any way to bring them back? Thanks!

PS: are the warnings that the code generate now anything I should be worried about?

library(dplyr)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
library(ggplot2)
library(rnaturalearth)
library(sf)
#> Linking to GEOS 3.9.0, GDAL 3.2.2, PROJ 7.2.1; sf_use_s2() is TRUE


ww_ini <- ne_countries(scale = "medium",
                       type = 'map_units',
                       returnclass = "sf")

bb <- ne_download(type = "wgs84_bounding_box", category = "physical",
                  returnclass = "sf") 
#> Warning: OGR support is provided by the sf and terra packages among others
#> Warning: OGR support is provided by the sf and terra packages among others
#> Warning: OGR support is provided by the sf and terra packages among others
#> Warning: OGR support is provided by the sf and terra packages among others
#> Warning: OGR support is provided by the sf and terra packages among others
#> Warning: OGR support is provided by the sf and terra packages among others
#> OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile 
#> Source: "/tmp/Rtmp3wWhXe", layer: "ne_110m_wgs84_bounding_box"
#> with 1 features
#> It has 2 fields


gpl2 <- ggplot(data = ww_ini) +
    geom_sf(  col = "black", lwd = 0.3 )+
    xlab(NULL) + ylab(NULL) +
    ggtitle("Test title")+
  geom_sf(data = bb, col = "grey", fill = "transparent") +
    theme(plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white"),
          panel.background = element_rect(fill = 'white'),
          panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "grey"),
          legend.position="top",
          plot.title = element_text(lineheight=.8, size=24, face="bold",
                                    vjust=1),
          legend.text = element_text(vjust=.4,lineheight=1,size = 14),
          legend.title = element_text(vjust=1,lineheight=1, size=14,
                                      face="bold" ))+
    coord_sf( crs = "+proj=eqearth +wktext") 

gpl2


sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.2.2 (2022-10-31)
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
#> Running under: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
#> 
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.9.0
#> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.9.0
#> 
#> locale:
#>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
#>  [3] LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8    
#>  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8   
#>  [7] LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
#>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
#> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       
#> 
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
#> 
#> other attached packages:
#> [1] sf_1.0-9            rnaturalearth_0.3.0 ggplot2_3.4.0      
#> [4] dplyr_1.0.10       
#> 
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#>  [1] styler_1.8.0            tidyselect_1.2.0        xfun_0.35              
#>  [4] purrr_1.0.0             lattice_0.20-45         colorspace_2.0-3       
#>  [7] vctrs_0.5.1             generics_0.1.3          htmltools_0.5.3        
#> [10] yaml_2.3.6              utf8_1.2.2              rlang_1.0.6            
#> [13] R.oo_1.25.0             e1071_1.7-12            pillar_1.8.1           
#> [16] glue_1.6.2              withr_2.5.0             DBI_1.1.3              
#> [19] R.utils_2.12.1          sp_1.5-1                R.cache_0.16.0         
#> [22] lifecycle_1.0.3         stringr_1.5.0           munsell_0.5.0          
#> [25] gtable_0.3.1            R.methodsS3_1.8.2       evaluate_0.18          
#> [28] knitr_1.41              fastmap_1.1.0           class_7.3-20           
#> [31] fansi_1.0.3             highr_0.9               Rcpp_1.0.9             
#> [34] KernSmooth_2.23-20      scales_1.2.1            classInt_0.4-8         
#> [37] jsonlite_1.8.4          farver_2.1.1            fs_1.5.2               
#> [40] digest_0.6.30           stringi_1.7.8           grid_4.2.2             
#> [43] rgdal_1.6-2             cli_3.4.1               tools_4.2.2            
#> [46] magrittr_2.0.3          proxy_0.4-27            tibble_3.1.8           
#> [49] pkgconfig_2.0.3         reprex_2.0.2            assertthat_0.2.1       
#> [52] rmarkdown_2.17          httr_1.4.4              R6_2.5.1               
#> [55] units_0.8-1             rnaturalearthdata_0.1.0 compiler_4.2.2

^{Created on 2023-01-05 with reprex v2.0.2}

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 05 '23 at 17:31

2

The bounding box is present on your plot as the outline of the map. We can see this if we specifically colour it red. If you are looking for a rectangle drawn around the whole plot then use the colour argument of panel.background inside theme (shown below)

I'm not sure what's going on with your equatorial line and latitude lines, since these show up as expected on my machine with the following code:

ggplot(data = ww_ini) +
  geom_sf(  col = "black", lwd = 0.3 )+
  xlab(NULL) + ylab(NULL) +
  ggtitle("Test title")+
  geom_sf(data = bb, col = "red", fill = "transparent") +
  theme(plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white"),
        panel.background = element_rect(fill = 'white', colour = 'black'),
        panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "grey"),
        legend.position="top",
        plot.title = element_text(lineheight=.8, size=24, face="bold",
                                  vjust=1),
        legend.text = element_text(vjust=.4,lineheight=1,size = 14),
        legend.title = element_text(vjust=1,lineheight=1, size=14,
                                    face="bold" ))+
  coord_sf( crs = "+proj=eqearth +wktext")

answered Jan 05 '23 at 17:31

Allan Cameron

147,086
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Thanks! The problem must be on my side. Can you please tell me which platform and version of rnaturalearth, rnaturalearthdata you use? – larry77 Jan 05 '23 at 17:42
I'm on windows, and literally just downloaded the latest version of rnaturalearth. I don't think this is a problem with rnaturalearth though - the equatorial and long/lat lines are grid lines drawn by ggplot, and are not present in the data itself (try adding `+ scale_y_continuous(breaks = c(-90, 90, 45))` to your plot to see whether the lines are drawn in as expected. – Allan Cameron Jan 05 '23 at 17:47
On my platform the latest version of rnaturalearth has an issue, so I resorted to the development version. Even after adding + scale_y_continuous(breaks = c(-90, 90, 45), the lat lines are still gone. – larry77 Jan 05 '23 at 17:53
I understood the origin of the problem on my platform: it is the equal earth projection coord_sf( crs = "+proj=eqearth +wktext"). Without that, I see a grid of lat and long lines. How to fix this, it is another issue. – larry77 Jan 05 '23 at 18:28
Can I just ask you which version of ggplot2 you are using? – larry77 Jan 06 '23 at 09:06
I produced this on v 3.4.0 – Allan Cameron Jan 06 '23 at 09:14
I marked your answer as the solution. The mystery deepens on my side though. – larry77 Jan 06 '23 at 09:52

R+natural earth + bounding box and equator missing

1 Answers1