ReLTER is an R package that provides access to DEIMS-SDR, allowing to interact with software implemented by eLTER Research Infrastructure (RI) and improving the data/information shared among the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. This package was conceived within eLTER H2020 project and will help advance the development of European Long-Term Ecosystem Research Infrastructures (eLTER RI).
The ReLTER package functions in particular allows to:
retrieve the information about entities (e.g.ย sites, datasets, and activities) shared by DEIMS-SDR (see e.g. get_site_info function);
elaborate the information of single site or merge info from national network sites or entire International LTER (ILTER) in order to provide maps, figures, graphs etc (see e.g. get_network_sites, produce_site_map or produce_site_observedProperties_pie functions);
interact with the ODSEurope managed by members of the Geo-harmonizer project starting with the dataset shared by DEIMS-SDR (see e.g. get_site_ODS function);
improve the quality of the dataset (see e.g. get_id_worms).
Functions currently implemented are derived from the discussion of the needs declared by eLTER users community.
The ReLTER package will follow the progress of eLTER-RI infrastructure and evolve with improvements and development of new tools.
๐ Citation
To cite ReLTER please use:
Oggioni, A., Silver, M., Tagliolato, P., & Karnieli, A. (2025). ReLTER: An R interface for environmental observation in long term ecological research. Ecological Informatics, 85, 102915. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2024.102915
@article{OGGIONI2025102915,
title = {ReLTER: An R interface for environmental observation in long term ecological research},
journal = {Ecological Informatics},
volume = {85},
pages = {102915},
year = {2025},
issn = {1574-9541},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2024.102915},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574954124004576},
author = {Alessandro Oggioni and Micha Silver and Paolo Tagliolato and Arnon Karnieli}
or:
Alessandro Oggioni, Micha Silver, Luigi Ranghetti & Paolo Tagliolato. (2025). ReLTER: An Interface for the eLTER Community (v3.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5576813
@software{alessandro_oggioni_2025_5576813,
author = {Alessandro Oggioni and Micha Silver and Luigi Ranghetti and Paolo Tagliolato},
title = {ReLTER: An Interface for the eLTER Community},
year = 2025,
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {v3.0},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.5576813},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5576813}
}
๐ Documentation
Visit the ReLTER website at docs.ropensci.org/ReLTER/ for further documentation, examples, and installation of the package.
โฌ Installation
You can install the main version of ReLTER from GitHub with:
If you want to install different package branch (e.g.ย โdevโ) can you use this command:
The ReLTER package is part of the R-universe community and it can be installed also use this command:
Alternatively {ReLTER
} can be used in a Docker container.
If you wish to help develop this package, please follow the contributing guidelines.
๐ฉโ๐ป Persons involved ๐จโ๐ป
Alessandro Oggioni https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7997-219X (CNR, Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment - IREA)
Micha Silver https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1128-1325 (Ben Gurion University - BGU)
Luigi Ranghetti https:://orcid.org/0000-0001-6207-5188 (CNR, Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment - IREA)
Paolo Tagliolato https:://orcid.org/0000-0002-0261-313X (CNR, Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment - IREA)
For a exhaustive list of contributors please visit authors page.
๐ Acknowledgements
This work has been partially funded from the European Unionโs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the H2020 eLTER-Plus project Grant Agreement No.ย 871128 (DOI: 10.3030/871128) and eLTER EnRich project Grant Agreement No.ย 101131751 (DOI: 10.3030/101131751)
Thanks to the reviewers and the editor (more about authors) for their work.