Download Costa Rica Outline from GADM

Downloads the Costa Rica country boundary from GADM 4.1 via gadm and returns it as an sf object. By default returns only the continental landmass, excluding the Isla del Coco and other minor oceanic islands. The downloaded file is cached locally to avoid repeated downloads.

This function provides a reproducible, always up-to-date alternative to the static cr_outline_c dataset included in the package, and ensures consistency across packages that depend on a Costa Rica AOI (e.g., paisaje and h3sdm).

Usage

get_cr_outline(continental = TRUE, path = tempdir())

Arguments

continental

`logical`. If TRUE (default), returns only the continental landmass by selecting the polygon with the largest area. If FALSE, returns the full GADM boundary including all islands (Isla del Coco and minor Pacific/Caribbean islands).

path

`character`. Directory where the GADM file will be cached. Defaults to tempdir(). For persistent caching across sessions, provide a permanent directory (e.g., "data/").

Value

An sf object with one feature (POLYGON geometry) in WGS 84 (EPSG:4326), representing the Costa Rica outline.

Details

## Caching GADM files are cached by geodata::gadm() in path. If the file already exists, it is loaded from disk without downloading again. For persistent caching, set path to a permanent directory.

## Consistency across packages Both paisaje and h3sdm use Costa Rica as the default study area in examples and vignettes. Using get_cr_outline() in both packages ensures the same geometry is used, derived from the same GADM version, rather than relying on static copies that may diverge over time.

## Island exclusion When continental = TRUE, the Isla del Coco (~550 km offshore in the Pacific Ocean) and any other minor islands are excluded by retaining only the polygon with the largest area after casting to individual POLYGON geometries.

References

Global Administrative Areas (GADM) version 4.1. https://gadm.org/license.html

See also

• cr_outline_c — static continental outline (no islands).

• cr_outline — static full outline (with islands).

• gadm — underlying download function.

• get_h3_grid — generate H3 grid over the returned AOI.

• GADM: https://gadm.org

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Continental outline only (default)
cr <- get_cr_outline()
plot(sf::st_geometry(cr), main = "Costa Rica (continental)")

# Full outline including islands
cr_full <- get_cr_outline(continental = FALSE)
plot(sf::st_geometry(cr_full), main = "Costa Rica (all territory)")

# Use as AOI — consistent with h3sdm
h7  <- get_h3_grid(cr, res = 7)
bio <- get_chelsa_historic(var = "bio1", aoi = cr)

# Persistent cache
cr <- get_cr_outline(path = "data/gadm")
} # }