Further Methods for Handling Spatial Data

This chapter is concerned with a more detailed explanation of some of the methods that are provided for working with the spatial classes described in Chap. 2. We first consider the question of the spatial support of observations, going on to look at overlay and sampling methods for a range of classes of spatial objects. Following this, we cover combining the data stored in the data slot of Spatial*DataFrame objects with additional data stored as vectors and data frames, as well as the combination of spatial objects. We also apply some of the functions that are available for handling and checking polygon topologies, including the dissolve operation.