Intersection of grid and polygon

Hi,

I am trying to intersect a grid with a polygon, since I want to calculate
the polygon area in each grid cell. Before I did the intersection, I
transformed my grid into a SpatialPolygon. In total it has 2242 features
(cells). My other polygon has 39746 features, since it consists of many tiny
parts. When I try to intersect them with intersect(), I am getting a
SpatialPolygon with 40439 features and not with 2242 or less . I tried the
same analysis with the 2242 cell grid and a Polygon with only 1 feature and
it worked. Is there a way to reduce the features to 1 ? Or do I have to use
another intersect function? I need 2242 grid cells or less as result since I
want to calculate the polygon area in each grid cell. I don't know how I can
solve this problem. Do you have any suggestions?

 

With best regards,

Angelika Gummert