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I have the following shapefile of a 10x10 degree latitude/longitude grid that I created in QGIS. I can read it into R using the rgdal package.

Grid<-readOGR(".","GridShapeFile")

It has the following attributes and structure. 

summary(Grid)

Object of class SpatialPolygonsDataFrame
Coordinates:
   min max
x -180 190
y -100  90
Is projected: FALSE 
proj4string :
[+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0]
Data attributes:
       ID             XMIN           XMAX           YMIN           YMAX    
 Min.   :  0.0   Min.   :-180   Min.   :-170   Min.   :-100   Min.   :-90  
 1st Qu.:175.5   1st Qu.: -90   1st Qu.: -80   1st Qu.: -60   1st Qu.:-50  
 Median :351.0   Median :   0   Median :  10   Median : -10   Median :  0  
 Mean   :351.0   Mean   :   0   Mean   :  10   Mean   : -10   Mean   :  0  
 3rd Qu.:526.5   3rd Qu.:  90   3rd Qu.: 100   3rd Qu.:  40   3rd Qu.: 50  
 Max.   :702.0   Max.   : 180   Max.   : 190   Max.   :  80   Max.   : 90 

# An example row of the data
Grid[50,]
class       : SpatialPolygonsDataFrame 
features    : 1 
extent      : -60, -50, 70, 80  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
coord. ref. : +proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs +ellps=WGS84+towgs84=0,0,0 
variables   : 5
names       : ID, XMIN, XMAX, YMIN, YMAX 
min values  : 49,  -60,  -50,   70,   80 
max values  : 49,  -60,  -50,   70,   80

I would like to learn how to create this same grid/shapefile entirely within R, rather than in QGIS, as well as grids of other sizes (1x1,5x5,etc.). The ultimate goal is to use over() in the sp package to overlay this grid onto another file of polygons and count the number of grids intersected by each polygon. I already know how to do this next step (I think), I just want to know how to generate the grid layer in R.

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6

Take a look at the raster function in the raster package. It will let you create a raster with a specified extent, number of rows/columns and resolution.

Here I will use characteristics of your data summary to create a 100x100 raster within the specified extent. I am passing an extent object to define the x and y limits. You can also use the specific arguments (xmn, xmx, ymn, ymx) within the raster function. 

library(raster) 
library(sp) 

r <- raster(extent(matrix( c(-180, -100, 190,  90), nrow=2)), nrow=100, ncol=100, 
            crs = "+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0")            
  r[] <- 1:ncell(r)
  summary(r)
  print(r)
  plot(r)

It is simple to coerce raster objects to a gridded sp object using; 

sp.r <- as(r, "SpatialPixelsDataFrame")
  class(sp.r)   
  spplot(sp.r, "layer")
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  • 1
    It works. In order to change the cell size alter the nrow and ncol arguments. For example, for 10 degree increments, change nrow=100, ncol=100 to nrow=length(seq(-90,90,10)), ncol=length(seq(-180,180,10))
    – Andy
    Jul 15, 2015 at 20:07
  • After creating the raster, you could also use something like: "res(r) <- 3.7" or the "resolution" argument in the raster function directly, but this would ignore the specified number of rows and columns.
    – Jeffrey Evans
    Jul 15, 2015 at 20:49
  • @JeffreyEvans I think I am after the same thing, but a rectangular version of these cells. I would like a grid of 20 x 10 degree cells from 180, -180 to 90, -90. However I am not sure what parts of this answer to edit to get that result (new to these programs) and, well, I am confused by all the colours.
    – Amroco
    Jan 19, 2017 at 20:08

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