Finding R Way in the Woods: Teaching coding skills with forest data

Learning Fundamental R Skills in a Vibe-Coding Age Students now have tools that can write code in secondsbut if they dont understand the code produced, they might miss the forest for the trees. To be able to generate, review, and understand code for scientific research, we first have learn the basics of data science, summary statistics and visualization using statistical software. This one-day workshop helps beginner-to-intermediate R users to work with a large-scale forest census dataset from the gobal ForestGEO network. Using Forest Census Surveys The globally coordinated ForestGEO network encompasses dozens of sites worldwide, with thousands of research leaders and staff, and over seven million trees. That much data (or even a lot less) can feel overwhelming at times, but we can take advantage of the consistent structure to gain powerful insights from this wealth of information. In this activity, students will focus on one 25.6-ha forest census plot from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (Virginia, USA). The goal of the lab activity is to use standardized forest census data to produce summary statistics and figures, in order to gain an understanding of the qualities of the SCBI plot, from a single stem to the entire forest. Students will run pre-written code, complete some fill-in-the-blank sing-along style code, and write their own code from scratch, with increasingly complex tasks as the lab progresses. Recommended Preparation: Students will benefit from having R and RStudio already installed, if using personal computers. I highly recommend providing students with Chapters 1-3 of Shelly Gaynors Introduction to R with Biodiversity Data, if they are new to R or need some review. You can also catch up on the who, what, and why of the ForestGEO research network by watching their 7-minute video. Have the students download all 6 .csv datafiles, the .Rmd assignment notebook, and the .R script for the biomass allometry function, and save them all in a single folder (this will be their working directory for the R session). Optional Follow-Up Assignment: After theyve completed the Data Lab with the SCBI data, students can work in groups to pick another ForestGEO site for their final group projects. Have them conduct all the same exploratory analyses from the data lab on the data from their new study site. The results will be shared in a 10-15 minute group presentation, the final assessment for the unit. In addition to summary figures and facts about the forest as an ecosystem, the presentations should include information and insights about the social and cultural aspects of the forest. How are the human-environment interactions here similar to those in other forests around the world? How are they unique? Learning Objectives: Learn (or review) basic and intermediate data manipulation in R Use data to create summary figures Pose a question based on existing datasets Compare economic and cultural uses of forest land and forest species in different parts of the world