Extract areas of multi-part polygons (SpatialPolygonsDataframe) R

Question

I have a SpatialPolygonsDataframe with multiple polygons, some of these have multiple parts (blue shapes below). In GIS-land it would be easy to get the areas of the individual parts of a multi-part polygon but it seems difficult to do this in R?

Answer 1

Here is a very simple and generic example. You need to access the relevant slots of the individual polygons. If you provide a data sample that better fits your situation I can try and be more specific.

mp <- readWKT("MULTIPOLYGON (((30 20, 45 40, 10 40, 30 20)),((15 5, 40 10, 10 20, 5 10, 15 5)))")

# total area
sapply(slot(mp, "polygons"), slot, "area")

# get list of individual polys
p <- lapply(mp@polygons , slot , "Polygons")

# areas of individual polygons
lapply(p[[1]], function(x) slot(x, "area"))