merging 2 polygon adjacent to each other using R

Question

I have several shp files which are the components (or tiles) of a map, I have joint all these tiles together to have a large shp file. Then I realized some of the polygon is now splitted into 2 halves, as the upper part belngs to a tile, while the lower part belongs to another tile.

This output disturb me a lot as I need to fill some polygon, but not part of the "splitted polygon", so I need to find a way to merge these splitted polygon back to one (preferrably mechanical way, as I have 10000+ polygons, not knowing which are splitted, which are not).

I need to know if the two or more polygons orginate from the larger polygon. And I think I can some how use union and spRbind to create an algorithm for this task. But I doubt if I am really the first one who encounter this problem, so I wonder if there is any existing tool in R that can solve this problem.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I can only provide a partial answer to your question.

There is a function in the maptools R package called unionSpatialPolygons, see here for a manual.

The function expects an ID field, and all polygons with the same ID value will be merged. If you have an ID that identifies your polygons to be dissolved, use it. Otherwise you could try something like

unifiedPolygons <- unionSpatialPolygons(myPolygons, rep(1, length(myPolygons))

but that will probably also dissolve all other polygons that touch within you area.