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fields

18.0Package record

Tools for Spatial Data

172packages dependsuggested by 65
625.4Kdownloads / year
48.2%test coverage
13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

For curve, surface and function fitting with an emphasis on splines, spatial data, geostatistics, and spatial statistics. The major methods include cubic, and thin plate splines, Kriging, and compactly supported covariance functions for large data sets. The splines and Kriging methods are supported by functions that can determine the smoothing parameter (nugget and sill variance) and other covariance function parameters by cross validation and also by restricted maximum likelihood. For Kriging there is an easy to use function that also estimates the correlation scale (range parameter). A major feature is that any covariance function implemented in R and following a simple format can be used for spatial prediction. There are also many useful functions for plotting and working with spatial data as images. This package also contains an implementation of sparse matrix methods for large spatial data sets and currently requires the sparse matrix (spam) package. Use help(fields) to get started and for an overview. All graphics functions focus on using base R graphics. The fields source code is deliberately commented and provides useful explanations of numerical details as a companion to the manual pages. The commented source code can be viewed by expanding the source code version and looking in the R subdirectory. The reference for fields can be generated by the citation function in R and has DOI doi:10.5065/D6W957CT. Development of this package was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant 1417857, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Colorado School of Mines. See the Fields URL for a vignette on using this package and some background on spatial statistics.

Install

Health

CRAN checks
13OK
Slowest check: 10.7 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64
Status changes
  • OK13 OK2026-10-17
  • NOTE9 OK, 4 NOTE2026-07-24
  • ERROR9 OK, 3 NOTE, 1 ERROR2026-07-23
  • NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-07-11
  • OK13 OK2026-05-09
Show 1 earlier changeHide 1 earlier change
  • WARNING11 OK, 3 WARNING2026-03-10
Advisories

none known

Documentation

In release 18.0
READMENoVignettesNoNEWSNoCitation fileYes · computed when R runs itWebsitenot declared in DESCRIPTION
Help pages
96 (2 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run
95%81 run in a plain check · 4 never run
Exported functions with examples
90%
Documented parameters
not tracked
Return-value docs
not tracked
Help pages citing references
6%

Downloads

625.4K
CRAN downloads in the past year
Rank #534 · ~1.7K/day · ~52.1K/mo
Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.
44K30 days
130.2K90 days
625.4K1 year
Compare downloads with other packages →
Also on10.4K r2u228 autocran38K conda_forge757 bioconda622 c2d4u

Repository

16Stars
6Forks
4Open issues
1Open PRs
0Releases
55Commits
1Commit identities
License file reads as GPL-2.0 · 55 commits · Last activity 2026-10-12
Responsiveness
How these are sampled
PRs merged (all time)
not measured
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues
85
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs
not measured

Commits over time

2026-07-19 · 522026-10-18 · 55
PracticesBeta

Checks run against github.com/dnychka/fieldsrpackage on 2026-10-18.

No development-tooling practices detected in the upstream repository.

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies
5 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing fields adds 6 packages (4 with compiled code, 8.3 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: spam 3.1 MB, maps 2.2 MB, Rcpp 1.8 MB.

Depends (5)
Imports (1)
LinkingTo (0)
none
Suggests (1)
Enhances (0)
none

Datasets

People & History

People (7)
Author, Maintainer · added in 2.7.0
Author · added in 2.7.0
Author · added in 9.9
Author · added in 9.9
Author · added in 16.2
Author · added in 8.3-5
Author · added in 3.0.3

Maintainer since 1.0 (2001)

Listed in earlier versions (3)
Show 3 peopleHide 3 people
no longer listed · 1.0 to 4.1
Stephen Sain
no longer listed · 2.7.0 to 6.8
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
no longer listed · 9.8-3 to 15.2
Releases (81)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

Show 100 earlier eventsHide 100 earlier events

Package metadata

First published
2001-07-27
Total releases
81 / 25 yrs
License
GPL (>= 2) OSI
Minimum R
≥ 4.0.0
Bundled data
3.5 MB / 23 files
Download size
3.9 MB
Appears in task views

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("fields")

The package provides a citation file that builds its entry when R runs it. Run citation() to see it.

Cite the R Observatory

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

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for fields version 18.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-22. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-22, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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