Data Skills Webinar: Work with NEON Plant Phenology Data

Workshop Description

This workshop will provide an introduction to discovering, accessing and preparing plant phenology observation data, primarily using R. The workshop will be divided into two sections. The first section will feature an overview of the NEON plant phenology data collection protocol. The second section will include a code-along guide to (a) accessing data through the NEON API from an R environment using the neonUtilities package, (b) understanding the contents and quality of various data packages, and (c) performing common data merges, visualizations, summarizations, and transformations with NEON plant phenology data. This workshop is part of a greater data skills and science seminar webinar series. Learn more about our Data Skills Webinars and Science Seminars HERE.

Prerequisites 

• We expect participants to have a basic level of familiarity with working with R, including installing and loading packages, and data import.
• Ensure R or R Studio and all relevant packages are installed (neonUtilities, ggplot2, dplyr). View the "Workshop Materials" section below for more details. 
• We also expect that participants have previously attended or viewed an Access and Work with NEON Data Workshop. View a previous Access and Work with NEON Data Workshop here. 

Registration

This workshop is in the past. Registration is not open.

Logistics

• Date: Tuesday, November 29th, 12:00PM - 1:30PM MT
• Location: Online/Zoom

Workshop Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4). 

Workshop Instructors

• Katie Jones; Research Scientist; NEON program, Battelle
• 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.

• neonUtilities: install.packages("neonUtilities")
• ggplot2: install.packages("ggplot2")
• dplyr: install.packages("dplyr")

#[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.