Workshop

Access and Work with NEON Data | AGU 2019

NEON

NEON provides open ecological data from over 80 locations across the United States. NEON data cover a wide range of subject areas of interest to AGU members, including micrometeorology, biogeochemistry, organismal observations, and both lidar and hyperspectral remote sensing. Some datasets already span several years of data collection. This workshop will provide an introduction to the basics of data access and data navigation: discovering and accessing data via the NEON data portal, accessing data via the neonUtilities R package, understanding the content and quality of the data downloaded, and performing common data merges and transformations. Basic familiarity with R is recommended for participation in the workshop.

Registration 

The workshop is limited to 40 participants – make sure to secure your spot by signing up by Dec 2, 2019! If spaces are available, registration may be extended beyond this date. 

This workshop is not affiliated with the AGU Annual Meeting and participants in this workshop do not have to be registered for the AGU meeting. 

Register Now

 

Workshop Learning Objectives

The participants of the workshop will learn about the available datasets and tools to study ecological processes using NEON data. By the end of the workshop, participants will understand how they can use the suite of NEON data products to address their research questions. After attending the workshop, the attendees will be able to:

  • Find, access, and interpret NEON data.
  • Find additional resources to learn to work with the NEON data of their choice.

Schedule

Location: San Francisco, CA. Additional details will be provided to registered participants.

Date: Wednesday December 11th from 11:00 AM–12:30 PM PT (local time)

Time Topic
11:00 Navigating the NEON website and data portal
11:30 Downloading and wrangling NEON data
12:20 Post-workshop suggested resources, questions, and wrap up

Workshop Instructors & Helpers

  • Claire Lunch; @dr_lunch, Research Scientist, Data Science; NEON program, Battelle
  • Donal O'Leary; Data Science Educator; NEON program, Battelle

If you have questions about the workshop materials, please contact one of the instructors.

Twitter?

Please tweet using #NEONData & @NEON_Sci during this workshop!

Before the Workshop

To participant in this workshop, you will need a laptop 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.

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Install R Packages

Please have these packages installed and updated prior to the start of the workshop. The last two are optional if you want to do the Compare Canopy Height exercise or the NEON API tutorial.

  • neonUtilities: install.packages("neonUtilities"); neonUtiltities only works with R version 3.4 or higher. For further directions, see the start of the Use the neonUtilities Package to Access NEON Data tutorial.
  • raster: install.packages("raster"); to work with raster files in R.

Optional:

  • devtools: install.packages("devtools"); required to install using the install_github() function.
  • geoNEON: install_github("NEONScience/NEON-geolocation/geoNEON”); to get specific location data for NEON data and samples. Optional for workshop.

If you want to install all of them, you can use the following code.

 install.packages("neonUtilities")
 install.packages("raster")

 #optional, if wanting to do Compare Canopy Height exercise or NEON API tutorial
 install.packages("devtools")
 library(devtools)
 install_github("NEONScience/NEON-geolocation/geoNEON")

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

Please note that the schedule listed below may change depending upon the pace of the workshop!

Time Topic
11:00 Accessing NEON Data
The NEON Data Portal
11:45 Working with NEON Data
Download & Explore NEON Data
(Optional) Using the NEON Data API in R
12:20 Final Questions & Evaluation
12:30 End Workshop