How to remove gap between graphs using cowplot (nrow = 2 ncol = 2)-CodePudding

As the title suggests I am trying to remove the gap where the x axis labels are meant to be for the top graphs - Root length and Root Surface Area. Any suggestions?

CODE

#Tukeys lettering

anova <- aov(Root_Length ~Treatment, data =JO_Data)
tukey <- TukeyHSD(anova)
cld <- multcompLetters4(anova, tukey)

JO_Data_Root_Length <- JO_Data %>% dplyr::group_by(Treatment) %>% dplyr::summarise(mean=mean(Root_Length), sd = sd(Root_Length)) %>% arrange(desc(mean))

cld <- as.data.frame.list(cld$Treatment)
JO_Data_Root_Length$cld <- cld$Letters

# Root length plot

plot.JO_Data.Root_Length=ggplot(JO_Data_Root_Length,aes(x = Treatment, y = mean, fill=Treatment))  
  geom_bar(aes(x=Treatment, y=mean), stat="identity", alpha=1)  
  geom_errorbar( aes(x = Treatment, ymin = mean -sd, ymax = mean  sd), width=0.4, colour="black", alpha=0.9, size=1)  
  geom_text(aes(label = cld, y = mean   sd), vjust = -0.5)  
  labs(y = expression(paste("Root Length (cm)"))) 
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0,0), limits = c(0,12000), breaks = seq(0, 12000, by = 2000))  
  scale_x_discrete(limits = c("Control", "Control   UAN 50", "Control   UAN 100","Compost", "Compost   UAN 50", "LD", "LD   UAN 50", "SD", "SD   UAN 50")) 
  scale_fill_manual(values = cbbPalette, breaks = c("Control", "Control   UAN 50", "Control   UAN 100","Compost", "Compost   UAN 50", "LD", "LD   UAN 50", "SD", "SD   UAN 50")) 
  theme(axis.line = element_line(colour = "black"),
        panel.grid.major = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
        panel.border = element_blank(),
        panel.background = element_blank(), 
        axis.text.x = element_blank(),
        axis.text.y = element_text(size = 12),
        axis.title.y = element_text(size = 12))   
  theme(legend.justification = c("right", "top")) 
  theme(legend.title = element_text(color = "black", size = 16, face = "bold")) 
  theme(legend.title.align = 0.5)  
  theme(legend.background = element_rect(linetype = "solid", colour = "black", size = 1)) 
  theme(legend.margin = margin(0.1,0.2,0.2,0.2, unit ="cm")) 
  theme(legend.text = element_text(size=14, colour="black")) 
  theme(axis.title.x=element_blank())

plot.JO_Data.Root_Length

################### three other graphs not added in code to reduce size but is  the same as Root length for the rest of the graphs ########

# Putting all the plots together

# install.packages("gridExtra")
library(gridExtra)
# install.packages("cowplot")
library(cowplot)

?plot_grid

JO_plot2 <- plot_grid(plot.JO_Data.Root_Length   theme(legend.position="none"),
                      plot.JO_Data.Root_SA   theme(legend.position="none"),
                      plot.JO_Data.Root_diameter   theme(legend.position="none"),
                      plot.JO_Data.Root_Vol   theme(legend.position="none"),
                      align = "h",
                      axis = "b",
                      hjust = 0.1,
                      vjust = 0.1,
                      nrow = 2,
                      ncol =2)

legend <- get_legend(plot.JO_Data.Root_Length)

Root_plot2 <- plot_grid(JO_plot2, legend, rel_widths = c(1.75, 0.5))
Root_plot2

Graph Output

I thought the axis.text.x = element_blank() would fix the problem but it hasn't.

Cheers :)

CodePudding user response：

Instead of plot_grid, I used:

ggarrange(plot.JO_Data.Root_Length   theme(legend.position="none"),
          plot.JO_Data.Root_SA,
          plot.JO_Data.Root_diameter   theme(legend.position="none"),
          plot.JO_Data.Root_Vol   theme(legend.position="none"), ncol = 2)

Image

seemed to fix this, however, would be good to use a command to remove that gap in plot_grid

CodePudding user response：

You could provide plot.margin for both plots and set negative value for the bottom margin and upper margin. This will ensure that both plot joins.