ausplotsR News

Changes in version 2.0.0

Breaking changes

• Default data download in get_ausplots now only includes $site.info table (and not vegetation point intercept - $veg.PI - nor vegetation vouchers - $veg.vouch as per previous default) due to increasing size of the dataset. Users can still select to extract vegetation point-intercept or vouchers as well as all the other modules available in ausplotsR. All downloaded data objects include a data $citation.

• Consistent implementation of logical arguments in functions, meaning some existing calls using character strings as selections will no longer work.

New features and data

• New and improved name standardisation fields according to the Australian Plant Census and Australian Plant Name Index. Original herbarium determinations remain available.

• Filter site downloads in get_ausplots based on unique site/visit codes as well as partial code match/wildcard feature. Previously, only the site_location_name code could be used to filter by text match.

• Improved handling and interpretation of revisit data:

  • Survey visit dates are now presented as R-readable dates in the $visit_date column and the sites table is appended with revisit numbers for each plot (i.e., 1, 2, 3 and so on) to simplify identification of revisits and their chronological order in column $visit_number.
  • Visualisation of vegetation change (species composition, diversity or input community indices) along a sequence of visits to a plot with new function ausplots_trajectory.

• Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.

Minor improvements

• Updated basal area calculations where per species values are requested in ‘basal_area’ to better reflect whole site species means (sum of species means = site mean).

Bug fixes

• Corrected plot order in ausplots_visual. Some plots and sets of visits had missing calculations that upset order and formatting of plots. This has been corrected.

• Various minor corrections to avoid nuisance messages.

Installation

• Package tested for compatibility with R v4 as it was originally built in v3.

• Adjustments to required package imports.