wcs_bathymetry: Download bathymetry from a WCS endpoint

In ggOceanMaps: Plot Data on Oceanographic Maps using 'ggplot2'

Download bathymetry from a WCS endpoint

Description

Fetches gridded bathymetry data on demand from an OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) and returns it as a bathyRaster object compatible with basemap and vector_bathymetry. Two sources are currently supported: "emodnet" (~115 m European waters) and "etopo" (1 arc-minute / ~1.85 km global).

Usage

wcs_bathymetry(
  limits,
  source = "emodnet",
  coverage = NULL,
  cache_dir = NULL,
  force = FALSE,
  max_area_deg2 = NULL,
  tile_size_deg = NULL,
  downsample = 0,
  timeout = 60,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

limits	Numeric vector of length 4 giving the bounding box in decimal degrees as c(xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax).
source	Character. The WCS source to query. One of "emodnet" (European waters, high-res) or "etopo" (global, 1 arc-minute). Partial matching applies.
coverage	Character. Override the default coverage for the source (e.g. "emodnet__mean_2022" for the 2022-vintage EMODnet DTM). NULL uses the source default.
cache_dir	Character. Directory in which downloaded GeoTIFFs are cached. Defaults to getOption("ggOceanMaps.datapath") or tempdir().
force	Logical. If TRUE, re-download even when a cached file exists.
max_area_deg2	Numeric. Maximum bounding-box area (in degree-squared) allowed before the function errors. Guards against accidentally downloading a very large area. NULL uses the source default (50 for EMODnet, 2000 for ETOPO). Bounding boxes larger than the source's single-request cap are split into tiles and mosaicked automatically – see Details.
tile_size_deg	Numeric. Edge length (in degrees) of the largest single-request tile. NULL uses the source default (3 for EMODnet, 30 for ETOPO). EMODnet reads 8-byte doubles internally so a 4-degree tile already exceeds its ~98 MB read cap; ETOPO is much coarser so larger tiles are fine.
downsample	Non-negative integer. Number of grid cells to skip when requesting the raster. 0 (default) keeps the source resolution; 1 requests half the rows and columns; n requests every (n+1)-th cell. Downsampling is performed by the WCS server, reducing both transfer size and memory use.
timeout	Positive numeric. Minimum HTTP timeout in seconds. A larger existing global timeout option is respected.
verbose	Logical. Print download progress and informational messages.

Details

EMODnet serves the European-waters bathymetric DTM at ~115 m native resolution (~0.00104 deg) in EPSG:4326 GeoTIFF format. The 1x1 deg tile around the North Sea is ~4 MB; a 5x5 deg tile would be ~100 MB and hit the server's ~98 MB read cap. Coverage is European regional seas only (~-36 to 43 lon, ~15 to 90 lat).

ETOPO (ETOPO1 Ice Surface, served by NOAA NCEI) is a global 1 arc-minute (~1.85 km) topo-bathy grid in EPSG:4326. Useful when EMODnet has no coverage. NCEI returns the GeoTIFF inside a multipart/related MIME envelope; wcs_bathymetry() extracts the binary part transparently.

To handle bounding boxes larger than the source's single-request cap, wcs_bathymetry() splits the request into tiles of at most tile_size_deg per axis, caches each tile, and mosaicks them via a GDAL virtual raster. Each tile is cached independently so subsequent overlapping requests reuse what's already on disk.

The returned object is a bathyRaster (same class returned by raster_bathymetry with depths = NULL) and can be slotted directly into basemap(shapefiles = list(bathy = ...)) or passed to vector_bathymetry.

Citation requirements: EMODnet bathymetry is published under CC-BY and must be cited if used in figures (https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/bathymetry). ETOPO1 also requires citation (Amante & Eakins 2009, NOAA NGDC; see https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model).

Value

A bathyRaster object: a list with elements raster (a read_stars object with positive depth values) and depth.invervals (a length-2 numeric range).

Author(s)

Mikko Vihtakari

See Also

raster_bathymetry, basemap

Other create shapefiles: clip_shapefile(), geonorge_bathymetry(), raster_bathymetry(), vector_bathymetry(), vector_land()

Examples

## Not run: 
  # European waters, high resolution
  bathy <- wcs_bathymetry(c(2, 3, 54, 55), source = "emodnet")
  basemap(c(2, 3, 54, 55),
          shapefiles = list(land = dd_land, glacier = NULL,
                            bathy = bathy$raster),
          bathymetry = TRUE)

  # Global coverage (Hawaii -- outside EMODnet)
  bathy <- wcs_bathymetry(c(-160, -154, 18, 23), source = "etopo")
  basemap(c(-160, -154, 18, 23),
          shapefiles = list(land = dd_land, glacier = NULL,
                            bathy = bathy$raster),
          bathymetry = TRUE)

## End(Not run)

ggOceanMaps documentation built on June 22, 2026, 5:07 p.m.