Explore NEON Workshop - HBCU Cohort

Paulinus Chigbu, PhD and Robert Shepard, PhD, will be hosting a three-day workshop with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) with a specific focus on identifying opportunities for collaboration, and increasing awareness of and engagement with NEON, among faculty, researchers, and students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

This workshop introduces participants to NEON, teaches them how to access and work with NEON data, and allows them to interact with NEON science staff to get assistance working on the specific data products they are interested in using. The workshop includes hands-on, interactive instruction on how to access and work with NEON data, both through the NEON data portal and programmatically.

Registration for this event will close January 15th. Please contact Dr. Chigbu and Dr. Shepard (see contact below) for more information.

Required Prior Knowledge

All coding instruction will be conducted in R and participants will be able to complete the workshop best if they have at least an introduction to coding. Participants without past experience working in a programming environment are encouraged to complete a basic introduction to R to understand the basics -- training options can be found on the Resources for Learning R page.

Workshop Schedule

Schedule subject to change. 

Location: Online. Virtual meeting link will be sent to registered participants.

Times: At time time, the schedule is tentative and subject to change, with tentative times listed below. All times listed are Eastern Standard Time (UTC -5) using 24-hour 'military time' notation.

Pre-Workshop

All participants will be asked to complete self-paced online tutorials/videos before the workshop and to have their laptops set up for the workshop and to learn some initial information about NEON. Please see the 'Workshop Materials' section below for details.

Day 1: Tuesday 19 January: Accessing & Understanding NEON data

Day 2: Wednesday 20 January: Using NEON Data, Part 1

Day 3: Thursday 21 January: Using NEON Data, Part 2

Workshop Hosts

• Paulinus Chigbu, PhD, University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES)
• Robert Shepard, PhD, The Shepard Institute, LLC.

Workshop Instructors

• Claire Lunch, PhD; Research Scientist, Data Science; NEON program, Battelle
• Donal O'Leary, PhD; Research Scientist, Science Education; NEON program, Battelle

Additional NEON scientists will participate in portions of the Explore NEON workshop.

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

Accessibility

If you have any questions regarding the accessibility of the workshop format, please contact Donal O'Leary.

Twitter?

Please tweet at @NEON_Sci and using the hashtag using #NEONData during this workshop!

Workshop Materials

Computer Set Up Instructions

These computer workshop instructions must be completed before starting the Exploring & Downloading NEON Data portion of the Pre-workshop Introductory Materials.

R & RStudio

To participant in this workshop, you will need a computer with the most current version of R, and preferably RStudio, loaded on your computer. Prior to the workshop you should have R and, preferably, RStudio installed 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 10/8/7
• 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 Desktop - 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("devtools")
 install.packages("neonUtilities")
 install.packages("raster")
 devtools::install_github("NEONScience/NEON-geolocation/geoNEON")
 install.packages("BiocManager")
 BiocManager::install("rhdf5")

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.

Pre-workshop Materials

Please complete all materials prior to the start of the workshop. The workshop will start with time for asking questions based on these introductory materials. Please keep a list of questions or concepts you need clarified.

1. The Future of Science is Open ( Video (6 mins))
2. Introduction to NEON (Video (4 mins) )
3. Navigating the resources from NEON (Tutorial , Video (7 mins). The tutorial covers more material than the video includes).
4. Explore and Download NEON data (Tutorial, Video (6 mins). The video only includes exploring the data on the data portal, not the complete tutorial).
5. NEON Spatial Design & Geospatial Data ( Video (6 mins))