Cleaning Biodiversity Data in R

Atlas of Living Australia’s practical guide to cleaning ecological data in R

Welcome

This book is a practical guide for cleaning geo-referenced biodiversity data using R. It focuses specifically on the processes and challenges you’ll face with biodiversity data. As such, this book isn’t a general guide to data cleaning but a targeted resource for those working with or interested in ecology, evolution, and geo-referenced biodiversity data.

This book was last rendered on 02 September, 2024.

License

This book is available free to read, and is licenced under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. This means that the book can be shared and redistributed as long as appropriate credit is given to the authors, and any minor changes are indicated appropriately. Modified versions that remix or modify the content may not be distributed.

Citation

Kellie, D., Kar, F., Balasubramaniam, S., Schneider, M., Schwenke, A., Torresan, O., Waite, C., Fenker, J., Westgate, M. (2024). Cleaning Biodiversity Data in R. (Version 0.1.2). https://doi.org/10.54102/ala.77009.

Cover

The Pacific Cleaner Shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) is a cleaning hero of coral reef ecosystems across the tropics. These shrimps clean parasites and dead tissue from “client” fish, which helps to heal the fish’s wounds and improve their health.

Credit: Dax Kellie 2024

Acknowledgement of Country

The Atlas of Living Australia acknowledges that we live and work on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands, rivers, and seas. Indigenous Australian peoples held and continue to hold incomparably intricate environmental knowledge as first peoples of this country. We are working with communities to acknowledge and archive these different types of knowledge in a culturally sensitive way.

The authors of this book currently reside on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri (Canberra), Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong (Naarm/Melbourne), Turrbal and Yuggera (Meanjin/Brisbane), Kaurna (Tarntanya/Adelaide), and Gadigal (Gadigal/Sydney) peoples. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.

Acknowledgements

This book was inspired by an Australian Research Data Commons project where our team worked closely with research partners to streamline their data cleaning workflows. This book is a collaborative effort from the Science and Decision Support team at the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA).