Routines for Evaluating Forest Inventory Data

Provides a collection of routines for evaluating data from larger forest management units, typically sample inventories, but also stand-wise inventories. The idea is to support modern forest planning approaches and to be open by design to new data sources and evaluation methods. For the methodological background of forest inventories see Kangas and Maltamo (2006) "Forest Inventory: Methodology and Applications" .

FeNEU - Evaluating Forest Inventory Data

FeNEU evaluates data from forest inventories of different design. It covers the assessment of the current state as well as the estimation of increment. The package is not tied to a single inventory concept; the combinations supported at present are sample inventories with concentric circular plots and stand-wise inventories with angle count sampling. By design, however, the package is open to additional inventory concepts and data sources in the future.

FeNEU reads raw field data, runs plausibility checks, completes missing tree heights, aggregates base and structure tables, estimates increment, and renders the results as PDF reports. It builds on ForestElementsR, which provides the underlying data structures and forest mensurational methods.

Installation

install.packages("FeNEU")

ForestElementsR is installed along with FeNEU.

PDF output — extra setup

The *_pdf() functions (e.g. output_base_table_pdf(), output_structure_table_pdf(), output_increment_overall_pdf(), plot_info_sheet_pdf()) render their results through rmarkdown and kableExtra on top of pandoc and a LaTeX distribution. The latter two are external to R and are not installed by install.packages("FeNEU"). They are set up once per machine:

1. The R packages that drive the rendering:

   install.packages(c("rmarkdown", "kableExtra", "tinytex"))
   

   plot_info_sheet_pdf() additionally needs ggrepel for the tree labels on its map: install.packages("ggrepel").

2. Pandoc: bundled with RStudio, so nothing to do there. Otherwise, installers are available from https://pandoc.org/installing.html; on macOS brew install pandoc, on Debian/Ubuntu apt install pandoc.

3. LaTeX: the shortest path for R users is TinyTeX:

   tinytex::install_tinytex()
   

   This installs a small LaTeX distribution (about 300 MB) into the user's home directory. The LaTeX packages FeNEU's templates require (siunitx, booktabs, longtable, makecell) are fetched on first render. An existing TeX Live or MiKTeX installation works as well.

diagnose_pdf_toolchain() reports which of these components are present and how to install the missing ones; setup_pdf_toolchain() installs TinyTeX if no LaTeX distribution is found (pandoc has to be installed by hand). The help page ?pdf_dependencies describes the requirements in full.

If a component is missing, the *_pdf() functions stop with a message naming it and pointing to ?pdf_dependencies, rather than with a pandoc or LaTeX backtrace.

Documentation

• vignette("FeNEU") — the workflow from import to the evaluation tables and reports.
• vignette("data_formats") — the supported input formats, with a runnable import for each of them.
• vignette("increment_estimation") — the three ways of estimating increment and the methods behind them.
• ?FeNEU — package overview.
• ?pdf_dependencies — requirements for the PDF output.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Bavarian Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture, Forestry, and Tourism for funding the projects FeNEU: Ein innovatives Instrument für die forstliche Planung in Bayern (E062) and Ertragskundliche Betreuung der langfristigen Versuche (W007). We also wish to thank our colleagues at the Bayerische Staatsforsten (BaySF) for their friendly cooperation. The development of FeNEU has benefited especially from exchange with experienced practitioners. We sincerely thank Sabine Andersen, Stefan Esser, Markus Fritsch, Christian Winter, Hans Stark, and Daniel Kraus, representing a much larger group. Among them is Rainer Dürr, author of the Silvarith software, who sadly died before the release of FeNEU.

License

AGPL (>= 3).