Event - Workshop

SFS 2021 NEON Aquatic Instrument Data Workshop

May 23, 2021

Hosted By:

Society for Freshwater Sciences

Registration

Registration is required - please Register Here prior to the event.

Workshop Description

Title: Explore and work with NEON aquatic instrument system data

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a National Science Foundation funded project designed to collect long-term, open-access data to better understand ecological change at continental scales. NEON includes 34 freshwater aquatic field sites spread across 19 different ecoclimatic regions, from Puerto Rico to Alaska.

This workshop will begin with an overview of the various NEON Aquatic Instrument System (AIS) data systems including how the various sensors are deployed at sites.  Participants will then learn how to access, interpret, manipulate, and visualize AIS data.  In particular, the workshop will focus on linking various water quality data with recently released continuous discharge data.  Time will be reserved at the end of the workshop for participants to work with the NEON data of their choice, with instructors present to answer any questions.  Basic familiarity with R is recommended for participation in the workshop, but all necessary code will be provided.

This workshop does not focus on NEON aquatic observational sampling (AOS) data including organismal data.  If you are interested in these topics, we recommend attending the ‘Explore and work with NEON biodiversity data from aquatic ecosystems’ workshop also being offered at this meeting.

Required Prior Knowledge

The workshop will assume that participants have a basic level of familiarity with working with data in R, including installing and loading packages, and data import.

Participants

This 3-hr workshop is part of the 2021 Society for Freshwater Science (SFS) Virtual Meeting and will occur during the meeting on Sunday, May 23rd, 9AM - 12PM EDT (the local time zone of the event). The workshop is open to all meeting attendees. However, registration is required and the workshop is limited to 30 participants.  

NEON’s target audience for this specific workshop are those interested in learning more about the observatory’s aquatic instrument system design, and/or wish to better understand the formatting and quality flagging of NEON instrument data. Instruction will guide participants in data organization and preparation approaches using the R software, with no prior experience with R necessary.

Workshop Instructors

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.

R & RStudio

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

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")
 [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.

Location:

TBD