Obtain a URL to download data from Protected Planet. Specifically, the URL provides access to data available through the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) and the World Database on Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (WDOECM). Note that data are accessed assuming non-commercial use.

wdpa_url(x, wait = FALSE, page_wait = 2, datatype = "gdb")

Arguments

x

character country for desired data. This argument can be the name of the country (e.g. "Liechtenstein") or the ISO-3 code for the country (e.g. "LIE"). This argument can also be set to "global" to obtain the URL for the global dataset.

wait

logical if data is not immediately available for download should the session be paused until it is ready for download? If argument to wait is FALSE and the data is not ready then an error will be thrown. Defaults to FALSE.

page_wait

numeric number of seconds to wait for web pages to load when finding the download URL on Protected Planet. Defaults to 2. Since the process of finding a download URL requires navigating through multiple web pages, the default argument means that the function will take at least 8 seconds to complete. Users on slow internet connections may experience issues with the default argument (e.g. resulting in an error containing the message Error: Summary: NoSuchElement). To avoid this, users can try specifying a greater value (e.g. 5 seconds).

datatype

character denoting the file format for which to download protected area data. Available options include: ("shp") shapefile format and ("gdb") file geodatabase format. Defaults to `"gdb". Note that global data are only available in file geodatabase format.

Value

character URL to download the data.

Examples

# \dontrun{
# obtain url for New Zealand data
nzl_url <- wdpa_url("New Zealand", wait = TRUE)
print(nzl_url)
#> [1] "https://d1gam3xoknrgr2.cloudfront.net/current/WDPA_WDOECM_Jun2024_Public_NZL.zip"

# obtain url for New Zealand data using its ISO3 code
nzl_url <- wdpa_url("NZL", wait = TRUE)
#> Warning: URL 'http://127.0.0.1:7630/json/version': status was 'Couldn't connect to server'
#> Error in open.connection(con, "rb"): cannot open the connection to 'http://127.0.0.1:7630/json/version'
print(nzl_url)
#> [1] "https://d1gam3xoknrgr2.cloudfront.net/current/WDPA_WDOECM_Jun2024_Public_NZL.zip"

# obtain url for global data
global_url <- wdpa_url("global")
print(global_url)
#> [1] "http://wcmc.io/wdpa_current_release"
# }