marmap

marmap

R
Author

Pante E

Published

April 9, 2026

An R package to fetch, plot and analyse bathymetric and topographic data

Presentation

Import bathymetric and hypsometric data from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model), GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, https://www.gebco.net) and other sources, plot xyz data to prepare publication-ready figures, analyze xyz data to extract transects, get depth / altitude based on geographical coordinates, or calculate z-constrained least-cost paths.

Installing marmap

marmap has its development page on github and is available on CRAN. The current version of marmap is 1.0.12 .

To install marmap from github:

# Install marmap from CRAN (example using package 'pak')
pak::pak("marmap")

# Or the development version from GitHub:
pak::pak("ericpante/marmap")

Some things marmap can help with

  • query the ETOPO1 bathymetry / topography database hosted on the NOAA website

  • import netCDF data from the GEBCO database

  • import and manipulate xyz data for analysis

  • build an SQL database of bathymetric data for easy query and subsetting

  • 2D and 3D plotting of marine and land charts

  • analysis and data summaries on bathymetric and / or topographic data

  • compute 2D and 3D cross sections

  • get least-cost distances based on bathymetry and topography, for multiple points

  • calculate projected surface areas

  • interact with the package raster and sp to project maps

    Check out vignettes on CRAN.

How to cite marmap

  • Pante E, Simon-Bouhet B (2013) marmap: a package for importing, plotting and analyzing bathymetric and topographic data in R. PLoS ONE  8(9): e73051. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073051

     @article{marmap_paper, 
  Author = {Pante, E. and Simon-Bouhet, B.}, 
  Journal = {PLoS ONE},
  Number = {9}, Pages = {e73051}, 
  Title = {{marmap: a package for importing, plotting and analyzing bathymetric and topographic data in R}}, 
  Volume = {8}, 
  Year = {2013}} 

@Manual{marmap_manual,
 title = {marmap: Import, plot and analyze bathymetric and topographic data},
 author = {Eric Pante and Benoit Simon-Bouhet},
 year = {2025},
 note = {R package version 1.0.12},
 }

marmap useage

Here is a dahsboard summirizing marmap stats and how marmap it is used by the community (this is to help us justify the time we spend developing the package).