climenv: Download, extract and visualise climatic and elevation data

Tsakalos, James Lee; Smith, Martin Ross; Luebert, Federico; Mucina, Ladislav

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between climate and vegetation requires climate data to be linked with ecological data, including habitat types and vegetation mapping. Our new R package climenv allows researchers to efficiently acquire, extract and visualise data sets that are commonly used by researchers to quantify the climatic envelope of vegetation. climenv offers integrated downloading and processing capabilities for three globally recognised data sets: WorldClim 2, CHELSA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data. The package allows users to easily download and extract these data sets for single and multi‐geospatial polygon and point data sets, facilitating studies that explore the relationship between vegetation and climate. Furthermore, climenv allows users to plot traditional Holdridge life zone classification, Walter–Lieth climate diagrams and new customised plots, which combine aspects of both these systems with other biologically relevant climate variables. By enhancing the usability and flexibility of these data sets, climenv helps to explore the intricacies of the relationships between climate and vegetation. Our package is accessible from CRAN (https://CRAN.R‐project.org/package=climenv) or GitHub (https://github.com/jamestsakalos/climenv).

Citation

Tsakalos, J. L., Smith, M. R., Luebert, F., & Mucina, L. (2023). climenv: Download, extract and visualise climatic and elevation data. Journal of Vegetation Science: Advances in plant community ecology, 34(6), Article e13215. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.13215

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 8, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Dec 6, 2023
• Publication Date: Dec 6, 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 8, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 7, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Vegetation Science: Advances in plant community ecology
• Print ISSN: 1100-9233
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 6
• Article Number: e13215
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.13215
• Keywords: CHELSA, WorldClim, Holdridge life zones, climate diagram, climate data, R package
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1901257