rbison

Wrapper for the USGS Bison API

Description

USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a web-based federal mapping resource that provides access to georeferenced (those with latitude and longitude coordinates) and non-georeferenced data describing the occurrence or presence of terrestrial and aquatic species recorded or collected by a person (or instrument) at a specific time in the United States, U.S. Territories, U.S. Marine Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), and Canada. Each record in a species occurrence dataset available in BISON will typically consist of a scientific name (genus and specific epithet), a date, and one or more geographic references such as a state name, county name, and/or decimal latitude and longitude coordinates. In addition to these typical data fields, species occurrence datasets often include many other data fields that describe each species occurrence event in more detail.

rbison allows one to pull species occurrence data from these datasets, inspect species occurance summaries, and then map species occurance within the US, within the contiguous 48 states, and/or at county or state level.

Current data providers for BISON can be found at https://bison.usgs.gov/providers.jsp

See https://bison.usgs.gov/doc/api.jsp for API docs for the BISON API.

Installation

From CRAN

install.packages("rbison")

Or the development version from Github

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ropensci/rbison")
library('rbison')

Load package

library("rbison")

Notice that the function bisonmap automagically selects the map extent to plot for you, being one of the contiguous lower 48 states, or the lower 48 plus AK and HI, or a global map. If some or all points outside the US, a global map is drawn, and throws a warning. . You may want to make sure the occurrence lat/long coordinates are correct.

get data

out <- bison(species = "Phocoenoides dalli dalli", count = 10)

inspect summary

out$summary
#> $specimen
#> [1] 7

map occurrences

bisonmap(out)

All points within the US (including AK and HI)

get data

out <- bison(species = "Cyanocitta stelleri", count = 500)

inspect summary

out$summary
#> $fossil
#> [1] 2
#> 
#> $observation
#> [1] 566346
#> 
#> $centroid
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $specimen
#> [1] 3294
#> 
#> $unknown
#> [1] 208

map occurrences

bisonmap(out)

All points within the contiguous 48 states

get data

out <- bison(species = "Aquila chrysaetos", count = 300)

inspect summary

out$summary
#> $literature
#> [1] 1641
#> 
#> $fossil
#> [1] 642
#> 
#> $observation
#> [1] 128811
#> 
#> $centroid
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $unknown
#> [1] 9734
#> 
#> $specimen
#> [1] 1899

map occurrences

bisonmap(out)

Map county or state level data

Counties - using last data call for Aquila

bisonmap(out, tomap = "county")

States - using last data call for Aquila

bisonmap(out, tomap = "state")

BISON SOLR interface

taxa

The taxa service searches for and gives back taxonomic names

bison_tax(query = "*bear")
#> $numFound
#> [1] 48
#> 
#> $names
#>       lc_vernacularName       vernacularName
#> 1  Louisiana black bear Louisiana black bear
#> 2            Sloth Bear           Sloth Bear
#> 3          grizzly bear         grizzly bear
#> 4              bear oak             bear oak
#> 5     yellow woollybear    yellow woollybear
#> 6            bear daisy           bear daisy
#> 7     banded woollybear    banded woollybear
#> 8    Asiatic black bear   Asiatic black bear
#> 9           Kodiak bear          Kodiak bear
#> 10     black-ended bear     black-ended bear
#> 
#> $highlight
#> NULL
#> 
#> $facets
#> NULL

And you can search by scientific name

bison_tax(query = "Helianthus*", method = "scientificName")
#> $numFound
#> [1] 212
#> 
#> $names
#>                       scientificName
#> 1              Discoaster helianthus
#> 2  Helianthus divaricatus latifolius
#> 3             Helianthus decapetalus
#> 4                Helianthus ambiguus
#> 5             Helianthus dowellianus
#> 6               Helianthus luxurians
#> 7               Helianthus arenicola
#> 8              Helianthus atrorubens
#> 9               Helianthus frondosus
#> 10   Helianthus nuttallii canadensis
#> 
#> $highlight
#> NULL
#> 
#> $facets
#> NULL

occurrence search

The occurrence service searches by scientific names and gives back occurrence data similar to data given back by the bison() function

Searching for data and looking at output

x <- bison_solr(scientificName = "Aquila chrysaetos", rows = 10, 
    fl = "scientificName,decimalLongitude,decimalLatitude")
x$points
#>    decimalLongitude    scientificName decimalLatitude
#> 1         -117.6185 Aquila chrysaetos        33.71447
#> 2         -117.6185 Aquila chrysaetos        33.71447
#> 3         -117.6185 Aquila chrysaetos        33.71447
#> 4         -117.6185 Aquila chrysaetos        33.70987
#> 5         -117.6014 Aquila chrysaetos        33.65099
#> 6         -117.4997 Aquila chrysaetos        33.68344
#> 7         -117.4544 Aquila chrysaetos        33.65246
#> 8         -117.4544 Aquila chrysaetos        33.65246
#> 9         -117.4543 Aquila chrysaetos        34.02910
#> 10        -117.4543 Aquila chrysaetos        34.02910

Mapping the data

out <- bison_solr(scientificName = "Aquila chrysaetos", rows = 1000)
bisonmap(out)

Meta

• Please report any issues or bugs.
• License: MIT
• Get citation information for rbison in R doing citation(package = 'rbison')
• Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

This package is part of a richer suite called SPOCC Species Occurrence Data, along with several other packages, that provide access to occurrence records from multiple databases. We recommend using SPOCC as the primary R interface to rbison unless your needs are limited to this single source.