The goal of this post is to introduce you to the fundamental structure of ForestGEO’s software.

The one place to find information about ForestGEO’s software is the website of the fgeo package. fgeo is a kind of umbrella: It is a meta-package that gathers multiple modules of ForestGEO’s software – each module corresponding to an individual package. Right now fgeo contains a number of packages, including fgeo.map, fgeo.tool and fgeo.habitat. This modularity facilitates managing and expanding ForestGEO’s software, by adding features to preexisting or new modules (packages).

From fgeo’s website you can find links to the individual packages, and then to the functions in each package. For example, this sequence of clicks takes you from the home page of fgeo to the help file of the function maply_quad: fgeo > Packages > fgeo.map > Learn more about fgeo.map > Functions Index > maply_quad. You may also want to visit the Tutorials tab and the Apps tab.

The easiest way to get all of ForestGEO’s software is by installing fgeo and then loading all packages in one call with library(fgeo). Installing fgeo takes longer than, say, only installing fgeo.map, but you have to go over this pain only once (and every time you want to update all packages). The installation instructions linked in this paragraph might be too succinct. For more details on how to install packages from GitHub you may read this short blog post.