R Observatory: Metrics for BIEN version 1.2.8

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

BIEN

1.2.8Package record

Tools for Accessing the Botanical Information and Ecology Network Database

2packages dependsuggested by 3

57.4Kdownloads / year

54.6%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Brian MaitnerCRAN page ↗

Provides Tools for Accessing the Botanical Information and Ecology Network Database. The BIEN database contains cleaned and standardized botanical data including occurrence, trait, plot and taxonomic data (See https://bien.nceas.ucsb.edu/bien/ for more Information). This package provides functions that query the BIEN database by constructing and executing optimized SQL queries.

Install

R (CRAN)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)

install.packages("BIEN", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-bien

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-BIEN

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 6.2 min · r-devel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-22
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-08-20
OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK12 OK2026-04-26

Show 3 earlier changesHide 3 earlier changes

ERROR13 OK, 1 ERROR2026-04-19
OK14 OK2026-04-09
ERROR13 OK, 1 ERROR2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.2.8

READMEYes · 93 wordsVignettesYes · 2 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structuredCitation fileNoWebsitenot declared in DESCRIPTION

Help pages: 98 (37 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 0%66 never run
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 1%

Vignettes (2)

BIEN R package HTML
BIEN tutorial HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

57.4K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #1,706 · ~157/day · ~4.8K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

4.2K30 days

12.5K90 days

57.4K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on363 r2u1.3K conda_forge

How downloads are counted

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

12 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing BIEN adds 16 packages (12 with compiled code, 21 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: sf 9.3 MB, s2 2.8 MB, Rcpp 1.8 MB.

Depends (2)

R >= 4.1.0RPostgreSQL

Imports (7)

DBI ape sf terra doParallelparallelforeach

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (5)

knitr rmarkdown testthat curl maps

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

2direct

3indirect

Imports 2

Suggested by 3

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

rangeModelMetadata occCite

Suggests, most downloaded first

wallace S4DM GVS

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Brian Maitner

Author, Maintainer since 1.0.0 (2017)

Releases (10)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

1.2.8Latest
record
2026-04-30 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
1.2.7
record
2025-01-31 · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.2.6
record
2023-01-06 · diff ↗ ·
removed 4 exports
BIEN_list_spatialpolygons, BIEN_occurrence_spatialpolygons, BIEN_plot_spatialpolygons, BIEN_ranges_spatialpolygons

added 4 exports
BIEN_list_sf, BIEN_occurrence_sf, BIEN_plot_sf, BIEN_ranges_sf
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
unarchivedReturned to CRAN
2022-02-25
1.2.5
record
2022-02-25 · diff ↗
archivedRemoved from CRAN
2022-01-06
check issues were not corrected in time Seems access to a remote PostgreSQL database
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
1.2.4
record
2020-02-27 · diff ↗ ·
added 6 exports
BIEN_phylogeny_label_nodes, BIEN_plot_spatialpolygons, BIEN_ranges_shapefile_to_skinny, BIEN_ranges_skinny_ranges_to_richness_raster, BIEN_ranges_species_bulk, BIEN_trait_country
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
1.2.3
record
2018-05-09 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
BIEN_stem_sampling_protocol

Show 7 earlier eventsHide 7 earlier events

R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.2.2
record
2017-08-03 · diff ↗
1.2.1
record
2017-07-31 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
pattern:^[^\\.]

added 53 exports
BIEN_list_all, BIEN_list_country, BIEN_list_county, BIEN_list_spatialpolygons, BIEN_list_state, BIEN_metadata_citation, BIEN_metadata_database_version, BIEN_metadata_list_political_names, BIEN_metadata_match_data, BIEN_occurrence_box, BIEN_occurrence_country, BIEN_occurrence_county, BIEN_occurrence_family, BIEN_occurrence_genus, BIEN_occurrence_records_per_species, BIEN_occurrence_spatialpolygons, BIEN_occurrence_species, BIEN_occurrence_state, BIEN_phylogeny_complete, BIEN_phylogeny_conservative, BIEN_plot_country, BIEN_plot_dataset, BIEN_plot_datasource, BIEN_plot_list_datasource, BIEN_plot_list_sampling_protocols, BIEN_plot_metadata, BIEN_plot_name, BIEN_plot_sampling_protocol, BIEN_plot_state, BIEN_ranges_box and 23 more
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.1.0
record
2017-03-08 · diff ↗
1.0.0
record
2017-01-12
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03

Package metadata

First published: 2017-01-12
Total releases: 10 / 9 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.1.0
Download size: 96 KB

Appears in task views

Network Analysis

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("BIEN")

Format

Maitner, B. (2026). BIEN: Tools for Accessing the Botanical Information and Ecology Network Database (Version 1.2.8) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.BIEN

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for BIEN version 1.2.8 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-18. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-18, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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