create a heatmap with regions in R - r

Question

I have the following kind of data: on a rectangular piece of land (120x50 yards), there are 6 (also rectabgular) smaller areas each with a different kind of plant. The idea is to study the attractiveness of the various kinds of plant to birds. Each time a bird sits down somewhere on the land, I have the exact coordinates of where the bird sits down.
I don't care exactly where the bird sits down, but only care which of the six areas it is. To show the relative preference of birds for the various plants, I want to make a heatmap that makes the areas that are frequented most the darkest.
So, I need to convert the coordinates to code which area the bird visits, and then create a heatmap that shows the differential preference for each land area.
(the research is a bit more involved than this, but this is the general idea.)
How would I do this in R? Is there a R function that takes a vector of coordinates and turns that in such a heatmap? If not, do you have some hints for more on how to do this?

Answer 1

Not meant to be the answer you are looking for, but might give you some inspiration.
# Simulate some data
birdieLandingSimulator <- data.frame(t(sapply(1:100, function(x) c(runif(1, -10,10), runif(1, -10,10)))))
# Assign some coordinates, which ended up not really being used much at all, except for the point colors
assignCoord <- function(x)
{
# Assign the four coordinates clockwise: 1, 2, 3, 4
ifelse(all(x>0), 1, ifelse(!sum(x>0), 3, ifelse(x[1]>0, 2, 4)))
}
birdieLandingSimulator <- cbind(birdieLandingSimulator, Q = apply(birdieLandingSimulator, 1, assignCoord))
# Plot
require(ggplot2)
ggplot(birdieLandingSimulator, aes(x = X1, y = X2)) +
stat_density2d(geom="tile", aes(fill = 1/..density..), contour = FALSE) +
geom_point(aes(color = factor(Q))) + theme_classic() +
theme(axis.title = element_blank(),
axis.line = element_blank(),
axis.text = element_blank(),
axis.ticks = element_blank()) +
scale_color_discrete(guide = FALSE, h=c(180, 270)) +
scale_fill_continuous(name = "Birdie Landing Location")

Answer 2

Use ggplot2. Take a look at the examples for geom_bin2d. It's pretty simple to get 2d bins. Notice that you pass in binwidth for both x and y:
> df = data.frame(x=c(1,2,4,6,3,2,4,2,1,7,4,4),y=c(2,1,4,2,4,4,1,4,2,3,1,1))
> ggplot(df,aes(x=x, y=y,alpha=0.5)) + geom_bin2d(binwidth=c(2,2))

Answer 3

If you don't want to use ggplot, you can use the cut function to separate your data into bins.
# Test data.
x <- sample(1:120, 100, replace=T)
y <- sample(1:50, 100, replace=T)
# Separate the data into bins.
x <- cut(x, c(0, 40, 80, 120))
y <- cut(y, c(0, 25, 50))
# Now plot it, suppressing reordering.
heatmap(table(y, x), Colv=NA, Rowv=NA)
Alternatively, to actually plot the regions in their true geographic location, you could draw the boxes yourself with rect. You would have to count the number of points in each region.
# Test data.
x <- sample(1:120, 100, replace=T)
y <- sample(1:50, 100, replace=T)
regions <- data.frame(xleft=c(0, 40, 40, 80, 0, 80),
ybottom=c(0, 0, 15, 15, 30, 40),
xright=c(40, 120, 80, 120, 80, 120),
ytop=c(30, 15, 30, 40, 50, 50))
# Color gradient.
col <- colorRampPalette(c("white", "red"))(30)
# Make the plot.
plot(NULL, xlim=c(0, 120), ylim=c(0, 50), xlab="x", ylab="y")
apply(regions, 1, function (r) {
count <- sum(x >= r["xleft"] & x < r["xright"] & y >= r["ybottom"] & y < r["ytop"])
rect(r["xleft"], r["ybottom"], r["xright"], r["ytop"], col=col[count])
text( (r["xright"]+r["xleft"])/2, (r["ytop"]+r["ybottom"])/2, count)
})