change projection on geom_sf map

Question

I need to map the east coast of US and Canada with ggplot and geom_sf, but I want to do so with a projection that will make Florida to Nova Scotia less exaggerated from East to West, such as Lambert Conformal, show in Fig 3.3 here: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/oce/vignettes/map_projections.html

How do I do this in ggplot with geom_sf?

Here's the section I have so far:

library(rnaturalearth)
library(tidyverse)

world <- ne_countries(scale = "small", returnclass = "sf")

world %>%
ggplot()+
  geom_sf(fill = "darkseagreen3") +
  coord_sf(xlim = c(-87, -50), ylim = c(18, 50), expand = FALSE)+
  theme_classic()+
  theme(axis.ticks=element_blank(),
        axis.text=element_blank(),
        panel.background = element_rect(color="transparent", fill = "transparent"),
        plot.background = element_rect(color="transparent", fill = "transparent"))

This is pretty much the area I need, but I want it to be not so wide east-to-west. Thanks.

Answer 1

Since you are using a simple features object, you can easily change the coordinate system as follows:

reprojected_World <- st_transform(world, 'EPSG:3082')

Here, the coordinate system chosen is the Lambert Conformal. For codes of other projections, see https://epsg.org/home.html. Good luck on your project.