Geometry only: sfc

Geometry list-columns (objects of class sfc, obtained by the st_geometry method) only show the geometry:

library(sf)
demo(nc, ask = FALSE, echo = FALSE)

## Reading layer `nc.gpkg' from data source `/tmp/RtmptpFtGS/Rinst253762c85271e/sf/gpkg/nc.gpkg' using driver `GPKG'
## Simple feature collection with 100 features and 14 fields
## Attribute-geometry relationship: 0 constant, 8 aggregate, 6 identity
## geometry type:  MULTIPOLYGON
## dimension:      XY
## bbox:           xmin: -84.32385 ymin: 33.88199 xmax: -75.45698 ymax: 36.58965
## geographic CRS: NAD27

plot(st_geometry(nc))

which can be further annotated with colors, symbols, etc., as the usual base plots, e.g. points are added to a polygon plot by:

plot(st_geometry(nc), col = sf.colors(12, categorical = TRUE), border = 'grey', 
     axes = TRUE)
plot(st_geometry(st_centroid(nc)), pch = 3, col = 'red', add = TRUE)

## Warning in st_centroid.sf(nc): st_centroid assumes attributes are constant over
## geometries of x

## Warning in st_centroid.sfc(st_geometry(x), of_largest_polygon =
## of_largest_polygon): st_centroid does not give correct centroids for longitude/
## latitude data

and legends, titles and so on can be added afterwards. border=NA removes the polygon borders.

As can be seen, the axes plotted are sensitive to the CRS, and in case of longitude/latitude coordinates, degree symbols and orientation are added if axes = TRUE.

Geometry with attributes: sf

The default plot of an sf object is a multi-plot of all attributes, up to a reasonable maximum:

plot(nc)

## Warning: plotting the first 10 out of 14 attributes; use max.plot = 14 to plot
## all

with a warning when not all attributes can be reasonably plotted. One can increase the maximum number of maps to be plotted by

plot(nc, max.plot = 14)

The row/column layout is chosen such that the plotting area is maximally filled. The default value for max.plot can be controlled, e.g. by setting the global option sf_max.plot:

options(sf_max.plot=1)
plot(nc)