macleish

The Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station is a 260-acre patchwork of forest and farmland located in West Whately, MA that provides opportunities for faculty and students to pursue environmental research, outdoor education, and low-impact recreation.

This R package allows you to download and process weather data using the ETL framework from the MacLeish Field Station. It also contains shapefiles for contextualizing spatial information.

To install

install.packages("macleish")

Use 2015 weather data

Weather data from 2015 is available immediately from both the Whately and Orchard weather stations.

library(macleish)
glimpse(whately_2015)

## Rows: 52,560
## Columns: 8
## $ when            <dttm> 2015-01-01 00:00:00, 2015-01-01 00:10:00, 2015-01-01 …
## $ temperature     <dbl> -9.32, -9.46, -9.44, -9.30, -9.32, -9.34, -9.30, -9.10…
## $ wind_speed      <dbl> 1.399, 1.506, 1.620, 1.141, 1.223, 1.090, 1.168, 1.307…
## $ wind_dir        <dbl> 225.4, 248.2, 258.3, 243.8, 238.4, 241.7, 242.3, 244.2…
## $ rel_humidity    <dbl> 54.55, 55.38, 56.18, 56.41, 56.87, 57.25, 57.71, 58.16…
## $ pressure        <int> 985, 985, 985, 985, 984, 984, 984, 984, 984, 984, 984,…
## $ solar_radiation <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, …
## $ rainfall        <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, …

glimpse(orchard_2015)

## Rows: 52,547
## Columns: 9
## $ when         <dttm> 2015-01-01 00:00:00, 2015-01-01 00:10:00, 2015-01-01 00:…
## $ temperature  <dbl> -9.62, -9.45, -9.52, -9.68, -9.56, -9.59, -9.51, -9.70, -…
## $ wind_speed   <dbl> 0.490, 0.517, 0.576, 0.522, 0.296, 0.382, 0.497, 0.781, 0…
## $ wind_dir     <dbl> 216.3, 209.6, 215.5, 199.3, 186.4, 183.9, 195.6, 210.4, 2…
## $ rel_humidity <dbl> 61.97, 59.08, 58.69, 58.59, 57.32, 57.58, 56.97, 60.52, 6…
## $ pressure     <dbl> 1020, 1019, 1019, 1019, 1019, 1019, 1019, 1018, 1018, 101…
## $ par_density  <dbl> 0.548, 0.548, 0.548, 0.548, 0.548, 0.548, 0.548, 0.548, 0…
## $ par_total    <dbl> 0.088, 0.088, 0.088, 0.088, 0.088, 0.088, 0.088, 0.088, 0…
## $ rainfall     <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, …

Live weather data

Weather readings are logged every 10 minutes. Current and historical (dating back to 1/3/2012 for whately and 6/27/2014 for orchard) meteorological readings are available through the ETL framework. Please see the documentation for that package for more information about how this works.

macleish <- etl("macleish")
macleish %>%
  etl_update()

whately <- macleish %>%
  tbl("whately")
whately %>%
  mutate(the_year = strftime('%Y', when)) %>%
  group_by(the_year) %>%
  summarize(N = n(), begin = min(when), end = max(when), avg_temp = mean(temperature))

orchard <- macleish %>%
  tbl("orchard")
orchard %>%
  mutate(the_year = strftime('%Y', when)) %>%
  group_by(the_year) %>%
  summarize(N = n(), begin = min(when), end = max(when), avg_temp = mean(temperature))

daily <- whately %>%
  mutate(the_date = date(when)) %>%
  group_by(the_date) %>%
  summarize(N = n(), avgTemp = mean(temperature)) %>%
  collect()

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(data = daily, aes(x = as.Date(the_date), y = avgTemp)) +
  geom_point() + geom_smooth()

Maps

Spatial data is available through the macleish_layers data object.

class(macleish_layers)

## [1] "list"

names(macleish_layers)

##  [1] "landmarks"         "forests"           "streams"          
##  [4] "challenge_courses" "buildings"         "wetlands"         
##  [7] "boundary"          "research"          "soil"             
## [10] "trails"            "camp_sites"        "elevation"

library(leaflet)
leaflet() %>%
  addTiles() %>%
  addPolygons(
    data = macleish_layers[["boundary"]], 
    weight = 1, fillOpacity = 0.1
  ) %>%
  addPolygons(
    data = macleish_layers[["buildings"]], 
    weight = 1, popup = ~ name
  ) %>%
  addPolylines(
    data = macleish_layers[["trails"]], 
    weight = 1, color = "brown",
    popup = ~ name
  ) %>%
  addPolylines(
    data = macleish_layers[["streams"]], 
    weight = 2
  ) %>%
  addMarkers(
    data = filter(macleish_layers[["landmarks"]], grepl("Met", Label)), 
    popup = ~Label
  )

Images

You can download live and historical images from Phenocam.

phenocam_image_url()

## [1] "https://phenocam.nau.edu/data/latest/macleish.jpg"

knitr::include_graphics(phenocam_image_url())
knitr::include_graphics(phenocam_image_url("2021-12-25 12:05:05"))

See also

• Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station
• etl