CCFBA: Access & Work with NEON Data Workshop

Workshop Background

In this 90-minute online workshop, NEON scientists will lead participants through the NEON website and NEON data portal to learn about NEON's online educational resources and how to download data. Then, participants will learn how to use the neonUtilities R package to transform NEON data into a format that is easier to work with, how to use provided metadata to understand data contents, and how to download data directly into R. The workshop will feature live instructional delivery with the opportunity to answer chat-supported questions. This is a closed workshop for students participating in the Community College Field Biology Alliance program. 

Required Prior Knowledge

This workshop has two components. First, a walkthrough of the online, educational resources available for working with NEON data. The final portion of the workshop goes into how to access NEON data programmatically from the NEON data portal using R. To follow along with this portion of the workshop on your personal computer (e.g., coding along with the instructors), we expect participants have a basic level of familiarity with working with R, including installing and loading packages, and data import. If you do not have a basic level of familiarity with working with R, we recommend you follow along by just watching. 

Optional Introductory Assignment

• Watch the NEON: Open Data to Understand our Changing Ecosystems video to get a quick introduction to the Observatory.
• Watch the Exploring and Downloading NEON Data Products video to get a quick introduction to the NEON Data Portal.
• Read through the Download and Explore NEON data tutorial  to get an introduction on how our tutorials are set up.
• If you want to code along during the workshop, install R studio and download relevant packages to the workshop. To do this, follow the instructions in the "Workshop Materials" section on the bottom of this page.
• If you want to code along during the workshop and are unfamiliar with R, we recommend you go through our Basic R Skills Tutorial

Logistics

Date & Time

Friday, November 4th, 9:00AM - 10:30AM PT

Registration

This is a closed workshop for students participating in the Community College Field Biology Alliance program. If you are a student in this program needing access to the workshop, contact your program leader. 

Workshop Schedule

All times are Pacific Standard Time.

Workshop Instructors

• Marie Faust; Science Outreach Specialist; NEON program, Battelle

Please get in touch with the instructors prior to the workshop with any questions.

Do you Twitter?

Please tweet at @NEON_Sci or use the hashtag #NEONData during this workshop!

Workshop Materials

Computer Set Up Instructions

These computer workshop instructions must be completed before starting the workshop.

To participant in this workshop, you will need a computer with a version of R >3.4 and, preferably, RStudio loaded on your computer.

Setting Up R & RStudio

Windows R/RStudio Setup

• Download R for Windows here
• Run the .exe file that was just downloaded
• Go to the RStudio Download page
• Under Installers select RStudio X.XX.XXX - Windows Vista/7/8/10
• Double click the file to install it

Once R and RStudio are installed, click to open RStudio. If you don't get any error messages you are set. If there is an error message, you will need to re-install the program.

Mac R/RStudio Setup

• Go to CRAN and click on Download R for (Mac) OS X
• Select the .pkg file for the version of OS X that you have and the file will download.
• Double click on the file that was downloaded and R will install
• Go to the RStudio Download page
• Under Installers select RStudio 0.98.1103 - Mac OS X XX.X (64-bit) to download it.
• Once it's downloaded, double click the file to install it

Once R and RStudio are installed, click to open RStudio. If you don't get any error messages you are set. If there is an error message, you will need to re-install the program.

Linux R/RStudio Setup

• R is available through most Linux package managers. You can download the binary files for your distribution from CRAN. Or you can use your package manager (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install r-base and for Fedora run sudo yum install R).
• To install RStudio, go to the RStudio Download page
• Under Installers select the version for your distribution.
• Once it's downloaded, double click the file to install it

Once R and RStudio are installed, click to open RStudio. If you don't get any error messages you are set. If there is an error message, you will need to re-install the program.

Install R Packages

Please have these packages installed and updated prior to the start of the workshop.

 install.packages("neonUtilities")

 install.packages("raster")
 # [additional packages may be added before the workshop]

Update R Packages

In RStudio, you can go to Tools --> Check for package updates to update previously installed packages on your computer. Or you can use update.packages() to update all packages that are installed in R automatically. More on Packages in R

Monitors

To allow for participants to view the workshop instructors (including screensharing) and to follow along with the activities on their own computer, we recommend participants have two screens to view the workshop. If you do not have access to dual monitors, alternatives include calling into the virtual meeting on a tablet or extra-large cell phone (smaller cell phone screens will make it challenging to see the presentation materials). In these are not options, the workshop can still be completed with a single monitor/screen.