Retrieving lake metadata

Overview

Questions

How can I retrieve lake information from Wikipedia?

Objectives

Retrieve some lake data from Wikipedia.

wikilake

The wikilake package provides functions to scrape the metadata tables from lake pages on Wikipedia.

Installation

Stable release from CRAN

install.packages("wikilake")

Development version

devtools::install_github("jsta/wikilake")

Usage

library(wikilake)

# metadata only
lake_wiki("Lake Mendota")

Retrieving data from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mendota

          Name                             Location Primary inflows
1 Lake Mendota Dane County, Wisconsin,United States    Yahara River
  Primary outflows Catchment area Basin countries Surface area Max. depth
1     Yahara River       562 km^2   United States   9740 acres       25 m
  Residence time Shore length1 Surface elevation
1      4.5 years       34.8 km             259 m
                               Frozen     Lat      Lon
1 December 20 (average freezing date) 43.1066 -89.4247

# pretty printing metadata
knitr::kable(tidyr::gather(lake_wiki("Lake Mendota")))

Retrieving data from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mendota

key	value
Name	Lake Mendota
Location	Dane County, Wisconsin,United States
Primary inflows	Yahara River
Primary outflows	Yahara River
Catchment area	562
Basin countries	United States
Surface area	9740
Max. depth	25
Residence time	4.5
Shore length1	34.8
Surface elevation	259
Frozen	December 20 (average freezing date)
Lat	43.1066
Lon	-89.4247

# metadata + map
lake_wiki("Gull Lake (Michigan)", map = TRUE)

Retrieving data from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gull_Lake_(Michigan)

plot of chunk worldmapping

       Name                                            Location
1 Gull Lake Kalamazoo / Barry counties, Michigan, United States
  Primary outflows Basin countries Surface area Max. depth
1   Gull Creek [1]   United States       8 km^2       34 m
  Surface elevation    Lat     Lon
1             268 m 42.399 -85.411

lake_wiki("Gull Lake (Michigan)", map = TRUE, "usa")

Retrieving data from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gull_Lake_(Michigan)

plot of chunk mapping

       Name                                            Location
1 Gull Lake Kalamazoo / Barry counties, Michigan, United States
  Primary outflows Basin countries Surface area Max. depth
1   Gull Creek [1]   United States       8 km^2       34 m
  Surface elevation    Lat     Lon
1             268 m 42.399 -85.411

lake_wiki("Lake Nipigon", map = TRUE, regions = "Canada")

Retrieving data from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nipigon

plot of chunk mapping2

          Name Location Primary outflows Catchment area Basin countries
1 Lake Nipigon  Ontario    Nipigon River     25400 km^2          Canada
  Surface area Average depth Max. depth Water volume Shore length1
1    4848 km^2        54.9 m      165 m     248 km^3       1044 km
  Surface elevation   Lat   Lon
1             260 m 49.83 -88.5

lake_wiki("Cass Lake (Michigan)", map = TRUE, "state", region = "Michigan")

Retrieving data from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Lake_(Michigan)

plot of chunk mapping3

       Name                 Location Basin countries Surface area
1 Cass Lake Oakland County, Michigan   United States   1280 acres
  Max. depth Surface elevation    Lat     Lon
1       37 m             283 m 42.606 -83.365

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