PBSmapping: Mapping fisheries data and spatial analysis tools

© Fisheries and Oceans Canada (2003-2022)

This software has evolved from fisheries research conducted at the Pacific Biological Station (PBS) in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. It extends the R language to include two-dimensional plotting features similar to those commonly available in a Geographic Information System (GIS). Embedded C code speeds algorithms from computational geometry, such as finding polygons that contain specified point events or converting between longitude-latitude and Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates. Additionally, we include C++ code developed by Angus Johnson for the Clipper library, data for a global shoreline, and other data sets in the public domain.

PBSmapping represents just one of a series of R packages developed at the Pacific Biological Station (PBS) in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Users of PBSmapping wanting a stable release should obtain it from CRAN.

This GitHub site assists developers in tracking issues, and may offer a more advanced version of PBSmapping than that on CRAN. Evolving packages (Windows binary and source tarball) are built after using CRAN's rigorous R CMD check --as-cran routine (using R-devel on a Windows 10 64-bit system) and posted to Google Drive. Most of the time, the current revision on GitHub can be built (supposedly) in R using devtools::install_github("pbs-software/pbs-mapping"); however, not every revision has been checked for CRAN worthiness.

New features in PBSmapping include:

• hexagonal grid cells (default = rectangular cells)
• clockwise map rotation (though coordinates become relative)
• compass rose

As with any freely available product, there is no warranty or promise that PBSmapping will perform adequately for all circumstances. Additionally, coding errors are possible, and users should contact the package maintainer if bugs are detected.

Maintainer: Rowan Haigh