Tools for Spatial Data
Overview
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
- 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
Documentation
- 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
Repository
- 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
Checks run against github.com/dnychka/fieldsrpackage on 2026-10-18.
No development-tooling practices detected in the upstream repository.
Dependencies
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.
Show the 48 most downloaded dependentsHide the 48 most downloaded dependents
and 124 more dependents and 65 packages that suggest it on CRAN ↗
Code & Tests
Datasets
People & History
Maintainer since 1.0 (2001)
Show 3 peopleHide 3 people
Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.
- 18.0Latest
- 17.32026-05-05 · diff ↗
- RR 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
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- RR 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
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- RR 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
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- RR 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
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- RR 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
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- RR 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
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- RR 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
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- RR 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
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- RR 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
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- RR 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
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- RR 1.6.0 released · 2002-10-01
- RR 1.5.0 released · 2002-04-29
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- 1.02001-07-27
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
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.
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.