Developing Geographic Thematic Maps with R

Question

There are clearly a number of packages in R for all sorts of spatial analysis. That can by seen in the CRAN Task View: Analysis of Spatial Data. These packages are numerous

Answer 1

Check out the packages

library(sp)
library(rgdal)

which are nice for geodata, and

library(RColorBrewer)  

is useful for colouring. This map is made with the above packages and this code:

VegMap <- readOGR(".", "VegMapFile")
Veg9<-brewer.pal(9,'Set2')
spplot(VegMap, "Veg", col.regions=Veg9,
 +at=c(0.5,1.5,2.5,3.5,4.5,5.5,6.5,7.5,8.5,9.5),
 +main='Vegetation map')

"VegMapFile" is a shapefile and "Veg" is the variable displayed. Can probably be done better with a little work. I don`t seem to be allowed to upload image, here is an link to the image: