Population Databrowser

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Jonathan Callahan

At Mazama Science we produce web based tools for interrogating important datasets. We are proud to announce the release of a new Population databrowser that allows users to review international population trends. We have done our best to make this release Open, Transparent and Reproducible by providing source code and data that enable readers to retrace our steps from raw data to final graphic.   read more …

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Using R — Working with Geospatial Data (and ggplot2)

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Bethany Yollin

This is a follow-up blog-post to an earlier introductory post by Steven Brey: Using R: Working with Geospatial Data. In this post, we’ll learn how to plot geospatial data in ggplot2. Why might we want to do this? Well, it’s really about your personal taste. Some people are willing to forfeit the fine-grained control of base graphics in exchange for the elegance of a ggplot. The choice is entirely yours.   read more …

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Getting your Mac ready for netCDF

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Jonathan Callahan

If you are working with weather or climate data or big 3-4D model datasets you will undoubtedly encounter netCDF. Unidata’s Network Common Data Format has been the workhorse data format for atmospheric and oceanographic modelers since the early 1990′s. With more and more scientists using Macs to get their work done, it is important to get them ready with the the necessary tools of the trade.  This post walks you through the steps for setting up a Mac to work with netCDF.   read more …

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Installing FFTW3 and the ‘fftw’ R package

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Jonathan Callahan

If you have to compile code that uses Fourier Transforms you may wish to use the FFTW library which the authors describe thusly:

Our benchmarks, performed on on a variety of platforms, show that FFTW’s performance is typically superior to that of other publicly available FFT software, and is even competitive with vendor-tuned codes. In contrast to vendor-tuned codes, however, FFTW’s performance is portable: the same program will perform well on most architectures without modification. Hence the name, “FFTW,” which stands for the somewhat whimsical title of “Fastest Fourier Transform in the West.”

This post has some tips on compiling this code and the associated R package ‘fftw’.   read more …

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Installing NetCDF and R ‘ncdf’

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Jonathan Callahan

If you work with large, gridded datasets you should probably be using NetCDF, the Network Common Data Form from Unidata:

NetCDF is a set of software libraries and self-describing, machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data.

Lots of high-end analysis software can be made to support NetCDF and it is indispensable for working with gridded datasets that weigh in at tens of gigabytes or more. This brief post describes the easiest way to install the NetCDF libraries and the R ‘ncdf’ package on our favorite systems: CentOS, Ubuntu and Mac OSX.   read more …

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