Releases: NCEAS/vegbankr
vegbankr-1.0.0
vegbankr: An R client for the VegBank API
Jim Regetz, Matthew B. Jones, Rushiraj Nenuji, Jeanette Clark, Maggie Klope. 2026. vegbankr: An R API package for the VegBank data system. Version 1.0.0. VegBank.
doi:10.82902/J1MW28
This package is an R client for VegBank, the vegetation plot database of the Ecological Society of America's Panel on Vegetation Classification, hosted by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). VegBank contains vegetation plot data, community types recognized by the U.S. National Vegetation Classification and others, and ITIS/USDA plant taxa along with other taxa recorded in plot records. As a VegBank API client, the vegbankr package currently supports querying and downloading vegetation plot records and other supporting information from the VegBank database, and supports validating and uploading new data to the VegBank database as well.
📝 Documentation
🌿 Related VegBank Ecosystem Components
These projects are architecturally independent, maintained in separate repositories, and follow their own development and deployment cycles.
- VegBank API: The VegBank API service and database storage system.
- VegBank Web: The user-friendly R Shiny interface for exploring VegBank data at vegbank.org.
🛠 What's Changed
- Update SWH ID by @rushirajnenuji in #87
- Update getters for endpoints with new minimal detail option by @regetz in #89
- Add docs and tests for search by vb_code by @regetz in #91
- Add more upload wrapper functions by @regetz in #95
- Add vb_create_dataset() by @regetz in #96
- Add status filter to relevant getters by @regetz in #103
- make upload response a little easier to understand by @jeanetteclark in #101
- Stop with error if token refresh is needed but fails. by @mbjones in #104
- Improve documentation on website by @jeanetteclark in #105
- R validators with pretty output by @jeanetteclark in #97
- release 1.0.0 changes by @mbjones in #107
Full Changelog: v0.9.0...v1.0.0
Contributors
Assets 2
vegbankr-0.9.0
This is the first complete release of the vegbankr package, with functionality for retrieving and contributing data from the VegBank system via its public REST API.
Core functionality
The package provides query capabilities for all VegBank resource types, including plot observations, taxon observations, taxon interpretations, plant concepts, community classifications, community interpretations, community concepts, projects, parties, references, cover methods, and stratum methods. Most of these support different options for controlling the level of detail returned by the API, and several also include search and sorting capabilities (plot observations, plant concepts, community concepts, projects, and parties).
New features
- Implement upload APIs for individual records and for bulk uploads
- Add support for authentication and authorization using ORCID identities
- improved documentation, including a new vignette on uploading data
- new API endpoints for overview stats
What's Changed
- Release 0.1.0 merge back to develop by @regetz in #58
- Implement core data frame upload capabilities by @regetz in #62
- Add getters/counters for new API endpoints by @regetz in #68
- Support VegBank identifier resolution by @regetz in #70
- Get overview stats from the API by @regetz in #72
- Support upload of plant and community concepts by @regetz in #74
- Feature 64 support auth 2 by @rushirajnenuji in #77
- Feature 75 documentation to create upload vignette by @mbjones in #82
- added documentation for disturbances, soils, and stem data by @lorrettalu in #84
- vegbankr release 0.9.0 by @mbjones in #86
Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v0.9.0
Contributors
Assets 2
vegbankr-0.1.0
This is the initial release of the vegbankr package, with functionality for retrieving data from the VegBank system via its public REST API.
Core functionality
The package provides query capabilities for 12 different VegBank resource types: plot observations, taxon observations, taxon interpretations, plant concepts, community classifications, community interpretations, community concepts, projects, parties, references, cover methods, and stratum methods. Most of these support different options for controlling the level of detail returned by the API, and several also include search and sorting capabilities (plot observations, plant concepts, community concepts, projects, and parties).
Querying functions support 3 different query types:
Single-record queries
Query for a single record of a given resource type (e.g., a plot observation), using its VegBank record identifier.
Cross-resource collection queries
Query for the collection of records of a given resource type (e.g., plot observations) associated with a single record of a different resource type (e.g., a project), using the VegBank record identifier for the linked resource. Query results are paginated, returning the first 100 records by default.
Full collection queries
Query for the full collection of records of a given resource type (e.g., plot observations), potentially filtered by a search term. Query results are paginated, returning the first 100 records by default.
Additional features
- Configurable API base URL (defaults to https://api.vegbank.org)
- Debug reporting for API calls, with 3 verbosity levels
- Query for record counts without retrieving full datasets
- Choice of JSON or Parquet serialization formats (both returned as data frames)
- Access to pagination metadata (limit, offset, returned count, total count) for batch processing of large datasets