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BIOMASS

INFRA · APIS
Velocity0.0

Estimating Aboveground Biomass and Its Uncertainty in Tropical Forests

github.com/umr-amap/biomass ↗

A tropical-forest biomass staple modernising its geospatial stack without saying so

forest-ecologybiomass-estimationgeospatialtaxonomydependency-migration
◆Current state
BIOMASS estimates aboveground biomass and its uncertainty in tropical forests and is well established in that niche. Its public changelog is close to empty: the most recent entry, 2.2.4, is a thirty-four character pointer to the NEWS file. The last release with readable content, 2.1.11, bundled six versions of work whose substantive part was migrating off sp and raster to sf and terra, and from httr to httr2.
◆Where it's heading
The visible arc is dependency modernisation and CRAN compliance rather than science: retiring sp and raster ahead of their deprecation, failing gracefully when taxonomic services are unreachable, and repeatedly changing taxonomic backend as those services disappeared — taxosaurus to TNRS, then away from Tropicos once it was no longer maintained. The recurring fragility is correctTaxo(), which depends on third-party name resolution outside the maintainers' control.
◆Prediction
Expect the next release to be another compliance or dependency response; on this feed's record the release notes will not say what changed, leaving the NEWS file as the only reliable source.

◆Recent moves

  1. 11mo ago

    Version 2.2.4 released on CRAN

    A release announcement that points at the NEWS file and says nothing else, so the direction of this version cannot be read from the feed at all. It registers only as evidence that the package is still being maintained.

    View source ↗
  2. 1y ago

    Migration from sp/raster to sf/terra and httr to httr2

    A cumulative entry covering versions 2.1.5 through 2.1.11, whose real content is retiring the sp and raster dependencies in favour of sf and terra, and httr in favour of httr2. It also adds graceful failure when the taxonomy API is unreachable and defaults the cache to the session temp folder, both CRAN policy requirements rather than user requests.

    View source ↗
  3. 5y ago

    TNRS replaces taxosaurus for name resolution

    Swaps the taxonomic name-resolution backend to TNRS and adds retrieval of accepted names, alongside a fix for plots containing a single tree in summaryByPlot(). The first of several backend changes correctTaxo() has needed as external services came and went.

    View source ↗