This data tracks woodland caribou in northern British Columbia, a Canadian province. It consists of almost 250,000 location tags of 260 caribou, from 1988 to 2016.
h/t to Alex Cookson for preparing this week's data!
The tracking was part of a study prepared in 2014 by the B.C. Ministry of Environment & Climate Change to inform the management and recovery of the species, which is classified as "Vulnerable" on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List.
The caribou range in North America/Canada is visualized courtesy of Wikipedia.
Data was accessed through Movebank, "a free online platform that helps researchers manage, share, analyze and archive animal movement data."
Original article citation
BC Ministry of Environment (2014) Science update for the South Peace Northern Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou pop. 15) in British Columbia. Victoria, BC. 43 p. url:https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/plants-animals-and-ecosystems/wildlife-wildlife-habitat/caribou/science_update_final_from_web_jan_2014.pdf
Data package citation
Seip DR, Price E (2019) Data from: Science update for the South Peace Northern Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou pop. 15) in British Columbia. Movebank Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5441/001/1.p5bn656k
# Get the Data
individuals <- readr::read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/master/data/2020/2020-06-23/individuals.csv')
locations <- readr::read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/master/data/2020/2020-06-23/locations.csv')
# Or read in with tidytuesdayR package (https://github.com/thebioengineer/tidytuesdayR)
# Either ISO-8601 date or year/week works!
# Install via devtools::install_github("thebioengineer/tidytuesdayR")
tuesdata <- tidytuesdayR::tt_load('2020-06-23')
tuesdata <- tidytuesdayR::tt_load(2020, week = 26)
individuals <- tuesdata$individuals
"Deployment" refers to when the animal was fitted with a location-tracking tag.
| variable | class | description |
|---|---|---|
| animal_id | character | Individual identifier for animal |
| sex | character | Sex of animal |
| life_stage | character | Age class (in years) at beginning of deployment |
| pregnant | logical | Whether animal was pregnant at beginning of deployment |
| with_calf | logical | Whether animal had a calf at time of deployment |
| death_cause | character | Cause of death |
| study_site | character | Deployment site or colony, or a location-related group such as the herd or pack name |
| deploy_on_longitude | double | Longitude where animal was released at beginning of deployment |
| deploy_on_latitude | double | Latitude where animal was released at beginning of deployment |
| deploy_on_comments | character | Additional information about tag deployment |
| deploy_off_longitude | double | Longitude where deployment ended |
| deploy_off_latitude | double | Latitude where deployment ended |
| deploy_off_type | character | Classification of tag deployment end (see table below for full description) |
| deploy_off_comments | character | Additional information about tag deployment end |
deploy_off_type classifications
| deploy_off_type | description |
|---|---|
| captured | Tag remained on the animal but the animal was captured or confined |
| dead | Deployment ended with the death of the animal that was carrying the tag |
| equipment failure | Tag stopped working |
| fall off | Attachment of the tag to the animal failed, and it fell of accidentally |
| other | Catch-all category for other deployment end types |
| released | Tag remained on the animal but the animal was released from captivity or confinement |
| removal | Tag was purposefully removed from the animal |
| unknown | Deployment ended by an unknown cause |
| variable | class | description |
|---|---|---|
| event_id | double | Identifier for an individual measurement |
| animal_id | character | Individual identifier for animal |
| study_site | character | Deployment site or colony, or a location-related group such as the herd or pack name |
| season | character | Season (Summer/Winter) at time of measurement |
| timestamp | datetime | Date and time of measurement |
| longitude | double | Longitude of measurement |
| latitude | double | Latitude of measurement |
# Load libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(janitor)
# Import data
individuals_raw <- read_csv("./caribou-location-tracking/raw/Mountain caribou in British Columbia-reference-data.csv")
locations_raw <- read_csv("./caribou-location-tracking/raw/Mountain caribou in British Columbia-gps.csv")
# Clean individuals
individuals <- individuals_raw %>%
clean_names() %>%
transmute(animal_id,
sex = animal_sex,
# Getting rid of whitespace to address inconsistent spacing
# NOTE: life stage is as of the beginning of deployment
life_stage = str_remove_all(animal_life_stage, " "),
reproductive_condition = animal_reproductive_condition,
# Cause of death "cod" is embedded in a comment field
death_cause = str_remove(animal_death_comments, ".*cod "),
study_site,
deploy_on_longitude,
deploy_on_latitude,
# Renaming to maintain consistency "deploy_on_FIELD" and "deploy_off_FIELD"
deploy_on_comments = deployment_comments,
deploy_off_longitude,
deploy_off_latitude,
deploy_off_type = deployment_end_type,
deploy_off_comments = deployment_end_comments) %>%
# reproductive_condition actually has two dimensions
separate(reproductive_condition, into = c("pregnant", "with_calf"), sep = ";", fill = "left") %>%
mutate(pregnant = str_remove(pregnant, "pregnant: ?"),
with_calf = str_remove(with_calf, "with calf: ?")) %>%
# TRUE and FALSE are indicated by Yes/No or Y/N
mutate_at(vars(pregnant:with_calf), ~ case_when(str_detect(., "Y") ~ TRUE,
str_detect(., "N") ~ FALSE,
TRUE ~ NA))
# Clean locations
locations <- locations_raw %>%
clean_names() %>%
transmute(event_id,
animal_id = individual_local_identifier,
study_site = comments,
season = study_specific_measurement,
timestamp,
longitude = location_long,
latitude = location_lat)
# Write to CSV
write_csv(individuals, "./caribou-location-tracking/individuals.csv")
write_csv(locations, "./caribou-location-tracking/locations.csv")