Get Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) from WDPA — splnr_get

This function serves as a wrapper for the wdpar package, facilitating the retrieval of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) and optionally intersecting them with provided planning units.

When Raw = FALSE (the default), the result is an sf object indicating which planning units are covered by the selected marine protected areas.

When Raw = TRUE, the function returns the dissolved WDPA polygon layer directly — after fetching, filtering, cleaning, and dissolving — without intersecting against planning units. This is useful for inspecting the raw MPA geometries, reprojecting them, or passing them to a custom gridding step.

Usage

splnr_get_MPAs(
  PlanUnits = NULL,
  Countries,
  Status = c("Designated", "Established", "Inscribed"),
  Desig = c("National", "Regional", "International", "Not Applicable"),
  Category = c("Ia", "Ib", "II", "III", "IV"),
  Raw = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

PlanUnits: An sf object representing the planning units to be used for intersection. Required when Raw = FALSE. Ignored (and may be NULL) when Raw = TRUE. This object should have a valid CRS defined.
Countries: A character vector specifying the countries for which to extract MPAs. To retrieve all global MPAs, use the value "global". Country names should match those recognized by the WDPA database.
Status: A character vector specifying the desired status of protected areas to include. Defaults to c("Designated", "Established", "Inscribed").
Desig: A character vector specifying the desired designation types of protected areas. Defaults to c("National", "Regional", "International", "Not Applicable").
Category: A character vector specifying the desired IUCN Protected Area Management Categories. Defaults to c("Ia", "Ib", "II", "III", "IV").
Raw: Logical. If FALSE (the default), the fetched and cleaned WDPA data are intersected with PlanUnits and the function returns a planning-unit sf object with a wdpa coverage column. If TRUE, the function returns the dissolved WDPA polygon layer directly (after fetching, filtering, cleaning, and dissolving), without any intersection. PlanUnits is not required in this case.
...: Other arguments that are passed directly to the wdpa_fetch() function from the wdpar package (e.g., verbose = TRUE).

Value

Raw = FALSE: An sf object of planning units with an additional wdpa column (set to 1) for planning units that intersect with the selected MPAs.
Raw = TRUE: An sf object of dissolved WDPA polygons with all columns returned by wdpar::wdpa_dissolve(), prior to any geometry-only selection or planning-unit intersection.

Details

This function leverages the robust capabilities of the wdpar package by Jeffrey O. Hanson to access and process WDPA data. It allows filtering of MPAs based on country, status, designation type, and IUCN category, and then optionally spatially intersects these MPAs with your defined planning units.

For a comprehensive understanding of the WDPA data fields:

Status: Refers to the establishment, designation, or proposal status of a protected area at the time of data submission. Valid options include "Designated", "Established", "Inscribed", "Proposed", and "Adopted".
Desig (Designation Type): Categorizes the legal or official designation of the protected area. Valid options include "National", "Regional", "International", and "Not Applicable".
Category (IUCN Protected Area Management Categories): Represents the IUCN management categories for protected areas. Valid options include "Ia", "Ib", "II", "III", "IV", "V", "VI", "Not Reported", "Not Applicable", and "Not Assigned".

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Assuming 'dat_PUs' is an existing sf object of planning units in your package.

# Example: Get MPAs for Australia and intersect with planning units (default).
dat_mpas <- splnr_get_MPAs(PlanUnits = dat_PUs, Countries = "Australia", force = TRUE)

# Example: Get raw dissolved WDPA polygons without intersecting planning units.
raw_mpas <- splnr_get_MPAs(Countries = "Australia", Raw = TRUE)

# Example: Get MPAs for multiple countries with specific status and categories.
dat_mpas_specific <- splnr_get_MPAs(
  PlanUnits = dat_PUs,
  Countries = c("Australia", "New Zealand"),
  Status = c("Designated", "Proposed"),
  Category = c("II", "IV")
)

# Example: Visualize the result using ggplot2.
# Assuming 'aust' is an sf object representing Australia's coastline,
# perhaps loaded from rnaturalearth::ne_countries.
aust <- rnaturalearth::ne_countries(country = "Australia", returnclass = "sf")

gg <- ggplot2::ggplot() +
  ggplot2::geom_sf(data = dat_mpas, ggplot2::aes(fill = wdpa)) +
  ggplot2::geom_sf(data = aust, fill = "grey50") +
  ggplot2::labs(title = "Marine Protected Areas in Australia") +
  ggplot2::theme_minimal()
print(gg)
} # }