Eight-thousanders – r.iresmi.net

A photo of the K2 mountain — K2 – CC BY-NC-ND by Marcelo Aguilar

Mapping the mountains above 8000 m, also known as the eight-thousanders.

Config

library(httr)
library(glue)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(purrr)
library(tibble)
library(stringr)
library(sf)
library(leaflet)

Data

Several non-trivial options for obtaining the data:

english Wikipedia doesn’t have the geographic coordinates to scrape (although other language Wikipedias do);
I can’t get a working SPARQL query on Wikidata (lack of knowledge from me) even with the help of SPINACH Wikidata Agent;
there is no easy OpenStreetMap relation to import (such categorical relations are discouraged).

So finally I resorted to make a direct Overpass API call, although {osmdata} should have also worked.

Using a Himalaya and Karakoram bounding box, we keep the summits above 8000 m having a prominence > 500 m (major peaks, otherwise we would get several secondary summits).

It should take about 1 minute… And we get a JSON, converted to a list, cleaned to a nice sf-data.frame.

overpass_query <- URLencode(
  r"([out:json][timeout:250];
  node
  ["natural"="peak"]
  (25,70,38,98)
  ["ele"]
  ["prominence"] 
  (if:number(t["prominence"]) > 500 && number(t["ele"]) > 8000);
  out body;)",
  reserved = TRUE) 

summits <- glue("https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data={overpass_query}") |> 
  GET() |> 
  content() |> 
  pluck("elements") |> 
  map(unlist) |> 
  map(enframe) |> 
  map(pivot_wider) |> 
  list_rbind() |> 
  rename_with(\(x) str_replace(x, "^tags\\.", "")) |> 
  st_as_sf(coords = c("lon", "lat"), crs = "EPSG:4326")

Simple feature collection with 14 features and 2 fields
Geometry type: POINT
Dimension:     XY
Bounding box:  xmin: 74.58954 ymin: 27.70301 xmax: 88.14748 ymax: 35.88168
Geodetic CRS:  WGS 84
# A tibble: 14 × 3
   name          elevation            geometry
   <chr>         <chr>             <POINT [°]>
 1 Mount Everest 8848.86   (86.92521 27.98806)
 2 K2            8611      (76.51333 35.88168)
 3 Kangchenjunga 8586      (88.14748 27.70301)
 4 Lhotse        8516       (86.9325 27.96199)
 5 Mount Makalu  8485      (87.08844 27.89144)
 6 Cho Oyu       8201      (86.65963 28.09675)
 7 Dhaulagiri    8167      (83.48949 28.69761)
 8 Manaslu       8163      (84.55973 28.54998)
 9 Nanga Parbat  8126      (74.58954 35.23846)
10 Annapurna I   8091      (83.81992 28.59581)
11 Gasherbrum I  8080      (76.69762 35.72468)
12 Broad Peak    8051      (76.56556 35.81369)
13 Gasherbrum II 8034      (76.65327 35.75773)
14 Shishapangma  8027      (85.78207 28.35176)

Table 1: The eight-thousanders

Map

summits |> 
  leaflet() |> 
  addTiles(attribution = r"(
           <a href="https://r.iresmi.net/">r.iresmi.net</a>.
           data and map: <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright/">OpenStreetMap</a>)") |> 
  addCircleMarkers(popup = ~ glue("<b>{name}</b> ({`name:en`})<br />
                                   {ele} m"),
                   clusterOptions = markerClusterOptions())

Figure 1: The eight-thousanders

--- title: "Eight-thousanders" description: "Day 1 of 30DayMapChallenge. Points" author: "Michaël" date: "2025-11-01T10:00:00" date-modified: last-modified categories: - R - OSM - 30DayMapChallenge draft: false freeze: true editor_options: chunk_output_type: console chunk_output_type: console execute: eval: true --- [![K2 – CC BY-NC-ND by Marcelo Aguilar](images/53218272258_03e063971a_c.jpg){.preview-image alt="A photo of the K2 mountain"}](https://www.flickr.com/photos/marceleada/53218272258/) Day 1 of [30DayMapChallenge](https://30daymapchallenge.com/): « Points ». Mapping the mountains above 8000 m, also known as the eight-thousanders. ## Config ```{r} #| label: setup library(httr) library(glue) library(dplyr) library(tidyr) library(purrr) library(tibble) library(stringr) library(sf) library(leaflet) ``` ## Data Several non-trivial options for obtaining the data: - [english Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander) doesn't have the geographic coordinates to scrape (although other language Wikipedias do); - I can't get a working SPARQL query on Wikidata (lack of knowledge from me) even with the help of [SPINACH Wikidata Agent](https://spinach.genie.stanford.edu/); - there is no easy OpenStreetMap relation to import (such categorical relations are discouraged). So finally I resorted to make a direct [Overpass API](https://overpass-turbo.eu/) call, although {osmdata} should have also worked. Using a Himalaya and Karakoram bounding box, we keep the summits above 8000 m having a [prominence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_prominence) \> 500 m (major peaks, otherwise we would get several secondary summits). It should take about 1 minute... And we get a JSON, converted to a list, cleaned to a nice sf-data.frame. ```{r} #| label: data #| cache: true overpass_query <- URLencode( r"([out:json][timeout:250]; node ["natural"="peak"] (25,70,38,98) ["ele"] ["prominence"] (if:number(t["prominence"]) > 500 && number(t["ele"]) > 8000); out body;)", reserved = TRUE) summits <- glue("https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data={overpass_query}") |> GET() |> content() |> pluck("elements") |> map(unlist) |> map(enframe) |> map(pivot_wider) |> list_rbind() |> rename_with(\(x) str_replace(x, "^tags\\.", "")) |> st_as_sf(coords = c("lon", "lat"), crs = "EPSG:4326") ``` ```{r} #| echo: false #| label: tbl-eight-thousanders #| tbl-cap: The eight-thousanders #| tbl-cap-location: bottom summits |> select(name = `name:en`, elevation = ele) |> arrange(desc(elevation)) ``` ## Map ```{r} #| label: fig-leaflet #| fig-cap: The eight-thousanders #| fig-alt: An interactive map of the summits above 8000 m summits |> leaflet() |> addTiles(attribution = r"( <a href="https://r.iresmi.net/">r.iresmi.net</a>. data and map: <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright/">OpenStreetMap</a>)") |> addCircleMarkers(popup = ~ glue("<b>{name}</b> ({`name:en`})<br /> {ele} m"), clusterOptions = markerClusterOptions()) ```