Venezuela Population Change Map

R script to download GHSL population rasters, compute and categorize population change for Venezuela, and produce a publication-ready map.

Description

This project downloads GHSL population rasters, crops them to Venezuela, computes population change (2025 − 2015), classifies pixels as decline / uninhabited / growth, and renders a map saved as venezuela-population-change.png.

Requirements

• R >= 4.x
• The script automatically installs the R packages: tidyverse, terra, giscoR, tidyterra (see pop_change.R).

Usage

Run the main script from the project root:

Rscript pop_change.R

Or open pop_change.R in RStudio and run interactively. Output: venezuela-population-change.png.

Data & tutorial

• Dataset (GHSL population): https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/download.php?ds=pop
• Tutorial video used for guidance from Dr. Milos Popovic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ_M-wv73aY

Project file

• pop_change.R — main script implementing the workflow and functions like get_country_borders and get_categories.

Notes

• The script downloads GHSL zip files into the working directory (see URLs inside pop_change.R).
• Coordinate reference used for plotting: Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area projection defined in pop_change.R.