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Create a Standardised Raster for Wetlands and Ramsar Sites

make_wetlands_ramsar.Rd

This function processes and combines Ramsar and global wetlands data to produce a standardised raster layer aligned to planning units. It supports handling of Ramsar point geometries by buffering them into polygons if required, and allows filtering and normalisation based on user-defined thresholds. Either Ramsar or Wetlands data can be provided, or both.

Usage

make_wetlands_ramsar(
  ramsar_in = NULL,
  wetlands_in = NULL,
  pus,
  iso3,
  buffer_points = TRUE,
  area_column = "area_ha",
  nQuadSegs = 50,
  wetland_threshold = 0.25,
  return_all = FALSE
)

Arguments

ramsar_in

Ramsar site data. Can be one of:

  • An sf object containing Ramsar site geometries (points and/or polygons)

  • A character path to a GeoPackage file. If the gpkg contains separate "centroids" and "boundaries" layers, both will be read and combined automatically.

wetlands_in

A SpatRaster object representing global wetlands data (optional).

pus

A SpatRaster object containing the planning units used for resolution and extent.

iso3

A character string with the ISO3 country code (e.g., "KEN").

buffer_points

Logical. Only relevant when "POINT" or "MULTIPOINT" geometries exist. If TRUE, circular buffers are generated from the area attribute (default: TRUE).

area_column

A string indicating the name of the column containing site area (in hectares). Used when buffering point geometries (default: "area_ha").

nQuadSegs

An integer specifying the number of segments used to approximate circular buffer (default: 50).

wetland_threshold

Numeric. Threshold for binarising wetlands raster (default: 0.25).

return_all

Logical. If TRUE, returns a raster stack containing the combined wetlands+ramsar raster, as well as the individual normalised input layers.

Value

A SpatRaster object. If return_all = TRUE, returns a raster stack with three layers: combined, ramsar only, and wetlands only.