ne_load: load a Natural Earth vector that has already been downloaded...

In rnaturalearth: World Map Data from Natural Earth

load a Natural Earth vector that has already been downloaded to R using ne_download

Description

returns loaded data as a spatial object.

Usage

ne_load(
  scale = 110L,
  type = "countries",
  category = c("cultural", "physical", "raster"),
  destdir = tempdir(),
  file_name = NULL,
  returnclass = c("sf", "sv")
)

Arguments

scale	The scale of map to return, one of '110', '50', '10' or 'small', 'medium', 'large'.
type	type of natural earth file one of 'countries', 'map_units', 'map_subunits', 'sovereignty', 'states' OR the portion of any natural earth vector url after the scale and before the . e.g. for 'ne_50m_urban_areas.zip' this would be 'urban_areas' OR the raster filename e.g. for 'MSR_50M.zip' this would be 'MSR_50M'
category	one of natural earth categories : 'cultural', 'physical', 'raster'
destdir	folder to load files from, default = tempdir()
file_name	OPTIONAL name of file (excluding path) instead of natural earth attributes
returnclass	A string determining the spatial object to return. Either "sf" for for simple feature (from 'sf', the default) or "sv" for a 'SpatVector' (from 'terra').

Details

This function should be used after first downloading the data with ne_download(load = FALSE). The downloaded file can then be loaded using this function.

Value

An object of class 'sf' for simple feature (from 'sf', the default) or 'SpatVector' (from 'terra').

See Also

ne_download

Examples

## Not run: 
# download followed by load from tempdir() works in same R session
spdf_world <- ne_download(
  scale = 110,
  type = "countries"
)
spdf_world2 <- ne_load(
  scale = 110,
  type = "countries"
)

# download followed by load from specified directory works between R sessions
spdf_world <- ne_download(
  scale = 110,
  type = "countries",
  destdir = getwd()
)
spdf_world2 <- ne_load(
  scale = 110,
  type = "countries",
  destdir = getwd()
)

# for raster download & load
rst <- ne_download(
  scale = 50,
  type = "OB_50M",
  category = "raster",
  destdir = getwd(),
  load = FALSE
)

# load after having downloaded
rst <- ne_load(
  scale = 50,
  type = "OB_50M",
  category = "raster",
  destdir = getwd()
)

# plot
library(terra)
plot(rst)
# end dontrun

## End(Not run)

rnaturalearth documentation built on Aug. 8, 2025, 7:31 p.m.