NEWS

ReLTER 3.1.2

released on 15/10/2026

iNaturalist research grade filtering

get_site_speciesOccurrences() now filters iNaturalist occurrences to research grade only, which is the quality level required by the ReLTER.inatEnrich enrichment functions. The function also enforces the iNaturalist API hard limit of 10,000 observations per query, capping higher requests automatically with a warning.

For sites with more than 10,000 research grade observations, consider using GBIF with the iNaturalist dataset key (50c9509d-22c7-4a22-a47d-8c48425ef4a7) as an alternative.

ReLTER 3.1.1

released on 11/06/2026

Bug fixes

Fixed message reporting for empty results within site boundary (now correctly uses eLTER_title.x).
Resolved edge cases where spatial intersection could drop key attributes.

New features

Extended eLTER metadata support: new fields include geology, hydrology, soils, vegetation, and size.value.
Cleaner post-intersection selection using original columns + eLTER_* fields.

ReLTER 3.1.0

released on 04/06/2026

Bug fixes

Fixed produce_site_map(): resolved deprecation warning caused by size argument in element_rect(), replaced with linewidth (ggplot2 >= 3.4.0)
Fixed produce_site_map(): resolved crash when get_site_info() returns a tibble instead of sf object (site with no boundary geometry)
Fixed get_site_boundaries(): resolved malformed WFS URL caused by full DEIMS ID URL being passed to CQL_FILTER instead of UUID only
Fixed all get_site_* functions: resolved zero-row results caused by jq queries iterating with [] on missing fields (e.g. belongsTo)
Fixed get_site_envcharacts(): resolved incorrect null check on precipitation.referencePeriod that was overwriting existing values with NA
Fixed produce_site_map(): resolved double theme() call that was overriding axis and grid settings

New features

get_site_speciesOccurrences(): occurrences are now intersected with the site polygon boundary and enriched with eLTER site metadata fields (prefixed eLTER_)
get_site_speciesOccurrences(): output now always includes a $map leaflet object; printed only when show_map = TRUE
get_site_boundaries(): added informative message when a site has no locations
produce_site_observedProperties_waffle(): waffle chart now built with ggplot2 only, removing dependency on unmaintained waffle package

Improvements

Refactored all get_site_* functions with consistent error handling, early returns, and lazy dtplyr_step materialisation via .materialise_query() internal helper
get_site_info(): categories joined via category_map list, removing seven repeated if/grepl blocks
get_site_info(): now contains also information of size provided by DEIMS-SDR
get_site_speciesOccurrences(): datetime harmonisation refactored into .fix_datetime() internal helper; source intersection refactored into .to_sf_and_intersect() internal helper
Replaced %>% with base pipe |> throughout

Removed dependencies

waffle (hrbrmstr/waffle) removed from Suggests and Remotes; produce_site_observedProperties_waffle() now uses ggplot2 only

ReLTER 3.0.1

released on 15/05/2026

Bug fixes

Fixed get_site_boundaries(): resolved malformed WFS URL caused by full DEIMS ID URL being passed to CQL_FILTER instead of UUID only

New features

Added site size collection in get_site_general()

Improvements

Refactored all get_site_* functions (get_site_general(), get_site_affiliations(), get_site_contact(), get_site_infrastructure(), get_site_observedProperties(), get_site_related_resources(), get_site_envcharacts(), get_site_boundaries()) with:
- Early return on invalid DEIMS ID instead of nested if/else
- tryCatch replacing capture.output for proper error handling
- Explicit materialisation of lazy dtplyr_step objects via dplyr::collect()
- Consistent invisible(NULL) on all failure paths
- Vectorised elevation unit assignment via lapply
Introduced internal helper .materialise_query() to reduce boilerplate across get_site_* functions
Replaced %>% with base pipe |> throughout

Deprecations

Deprecated sensor functions
Deprecated dataset functions

ReLTER 3.0.0

released on 20/08/2025

Changes

Four functions were deprecated: get_site_MODIS, get_site_ODS, get_ilter_*, get_network_*, get_sos_*, and produce_zenodo_record;
These were replaced by a new function get_site_EcoDataCube;
Dependency on the older raster package was removed, and terra was used instead;
Vignettes and documentation were improved;
Rarely used packages were removed to reduce the number of dependencies (e.g., purrr);
All map plots were standardized to use leaflet (requires leaflet >= 2.1.1);
Several functions were revised to make them more readable and concise (e.g., produce_network_points_map and produce_site_map);
Dependencies were analyzed across all functions, and their number was reduced accordingly. For this purpose, a summary table was created (see Google Spreadsheet packages_vs_functions) showing the overall number of packages and their usage by function;
Packages used only a few times (≤ 2) were removed, favoring base functions or functions already widely used in the package;
Installation requirements were revised by evaluating which packages should not be mandatory at install time. This was achieved by:

@seealso tags were used (e.g., @seealso[tidyr::nest()]) instead of @importFrom to indicate usage without forcing package loading;
Packages were moved from the Imports to the Suggests section in the DESCRIPTION file;
Package availability was checked dynamically with requireNamespace("<package_name>", quietly = TRUE);
Direct calls were replaced with wrappers to avoid package loading, e.g., unnest_fx <- getNamespace("tidyr", "unnest") and then unnest_fx(cols = c(id)).

Cheatsheets were created to provide users with quick references to the main functionalities of the package.

ReLTER 2.2.0

released on 29/11/2023

Changes

new function get_location_info, get_site_boundaries, get_sites_interactive, get_sites_within_3d_bounding_box, get_sites_within_radius, plot_agg_map, and plot_timeseries
replaced httr package with httr2
replaced RCurl package with httr2
removed rgeos dependancies

ReLTER 2.1.2

released on 30/01/2023

Changes

ReLTER 2.1.1

released on 30/01/2023

Minor changes

Fixes leaflet prob in get_site_MODIS function.

ReLTER 2.1.0

released on 25/01/2023

Changes

inserted new function for acquire either Land Surface Temperature (LST) or Vegetation Index (NDVI) both cropped to an eLTER site boundary;
outputs enrichment of certain functions with unit of measurement (UOM) and labeling with semantic terms (e.g. \href{https://dwc.tdwg.org/terms/}{Darwin Core} in the taxon_id_.R or \href{http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk}{NERC} in the get_sos_.R functions).

ReLTER 2.0.1

released on 24/01/2023

Changes

Fix vignette issues
Fix ilter generalinfo
Fix documentation
Fix missing urlencode and change documentation. Add support for multilingual country search
Fix too many http requests

ReLTER 2.0.0

released on 30/09/2022

Changes

inserted new functions for set an environment for variables of the package, for setting and for get the DEIMS-SDR base URL;
inserted a new function for get version of DEIMS-SDR API based on the DEIMS-SDR base URL;
added an object (queries_jq) containing all the JQ queries (as a list);
added the new JQ queries accordingly with the structure of the new DEIMS-SDR API version;
deleted the JQ queries call into the get_site_info(), get_activity_info(), and get_dataset_info() and substitute with a variable;
changed the name of the functions containing "parameters" with "observed properties";
added for some functions the life cycle badge;
acquisition to species occurrences from GBIF, iNaturalist and OBIS;
harmonisation to the output of species occurrences in eLTER Data Reporting Format (v3.1);
creation the archive (zip) with files following the eLTER Data Reporting Format (v3.1);
composition of file naming convention following the eLTER Data Reporting Format (v3.1);
composition of the object containing the eLTER Data Reporting Format (v3.1) tables;
interaction with Sensor Observations Services (SOS - v2.0) for acquire procedure list, procedure info, feature of interest info, observed property info, and observations;
interaction to the Zenodo repository in order to upload record or download dataset record;
substituted the SPARQL package with httr2.

ReLTER 1.1.0

released on 15/04/2022

Major changes

all the suggestion from rOpenSci reviewers has been evaluated and taken into account in this release;
revised and linguistically corrected the documentation of package;
revised and graphically enriched the documentation of the functions;
created the vignettes of the package;
new functions (get_site_ODS and taxon_id_worms) has been implemented;
enriched the information downloaded for datasets and activities from DEIMS-SDR;
a solution for install package by Docker has been done;
all the packages used in the ReLTER have been referenced in each functions manual.

ReLTER 1.0.0

released on 15/11/2021

Major changes

all the get_site_xxx functions could be merged into one, with an additional function parameter category;
all the functions are renamed according with CRAN suggestion;
first release of vignettes have been done;
new functions for interactive improvements of taxa names using PESI and WORMS repository have been done;
function acquires one of eight raster datasets from the European OpenDataScience maps website for a selected DEIMS site have been implemented by @micha-silver;
a fully review of functions and package description have been done.

Minor changes

CITATION file are been created;
this version has been submitted on rOpenSci.

ReLTER 0.2.0

released on 18/10/2021

Major changes

After the first minor release big improvements are been done:

all functions have been re-engineered with harmonized metadata, testing and evaluation of error-causing situations,
all situation where the functions writing something in the local environment have been removed,
some test to the functions have been added,
the logo and thumbnails have been created,
a new function getILTERGeneralInfo have been added to the package.

Bug Fixes

all the warnings, generated during installation, have been removed.

ReLTER 0.1.1

released on 28/01/2021

Major changes

After the first test some improvements are been done:

all functions have been re-tested
three functions have been added:

createQRCode
parametersChartPie
parametersChartWaffle

the NEWS.md file has been created

Minor Changes

The examples for all functions have been improved

Bug Fixes

The problem of installing the package has been resolved

ReLTER 0.1.0

released on 28/01/2019

Major changes

Beta release of ReLTER package!

Some functions are released within this version of package:

getSiteAffiliations
getSiteBoundaries
getSiteContact
getSiteEnvCharacts
getSiteRelatedResources
getSiteResearchTopics
getSiteGeneral
getSiteInfrastructure
getSiteParameters
getNetworkEnvCharacts
getNetworkParameters
getNetworkResearchTopics
getNetworkRelatedResources
getNetworkSites
getILTERParameters
getILTEREnvCharacts
getILTERResearchTopics
getActivity
getDataset
mapNetworkPoint
produceMapOfSiteFromDEIMS
taxonIDPesi

Documentation and application site have been created.
The whole package is released on GitHub and available to the developer community.