redlistr is an R package that contains a set of tools suitable for
calculating the metrics required for making assessments of species and
ecosystems against the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and the IUCN
Red List of Ecosystems categories and criteria.The paper describing
redlistr has been published on Ecography and is available
here.
important note: rredlist is a different package that works with the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’ API.
The redlistr package was developed to assist users conduct assessments
for the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems in R. It is also useful for users
interested in conducting assessments for the Red List of Threatened
Species. Assessments of ecosystems under the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems
criteria require calculation of standardised metrics that were developed
to objectively assess risk to ecosystem (Keith et
al. 2013).
This package was designed to assist in the calculation of these metrics,
including two methods of calculating the rate of distirbutional decline:
Absolute Rate of Decline (ARD) and Proportional Rate of Decline (PRC).
An additional metric: the Annual Rate of Change (ARC), which uses a
compound interest law to determine the instantaenous rate of change
(Puyravaud
2003)
is also included.
Also included are the two standard measures of the size of an ecosystems’ geographic distribution specified in the red list of ecosystems guidelines (Bland et al. 2016). These are the Extent of Occurrence (EOO) and Area of Occupancy (AOO). As many of these measures are also useful for assessing species under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species criteria, we expect this package will also be useful for assessors conducting species assessments.
In conducting an assessment with this package, we assume that you are familiar with IUCN red listing protocols. In particular, you should consult the IUCN guidelines for both of the red lists, which are the definitive sources of all information required to ensure consistent application of IUCN criteria (Bland et al. 2016). In addition, the papers by Keith et al. (2013) and Rodriguez et al. (2015) are particularly useful for navigating the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems criteria. A range of important resources, including software tools and guiding material is available on the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems website. There is also plenty of handy material for assessing species available on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species website.
We also assume that you are reasonably familiar with the R programming
language, and have some experience in conducting analyses of vector and
raster data within the R environment. Of particular use will be
familiarity with the raster, sp and rgeos packages. This is
certainly not a prerequisite, but this package is built upon many of the
functions available in these three packages.
For a more detailed tutorial explaining how to use this package, please refer to the ‘Calculating spatial metrics for IUCN red list assessments’ vignette available with the package.
Lastly, this is a work in progress and we aim to continually add new functions to newer versions of package. Suggestions are welcomed, as are offers for collaborative development.
redlistr is now on CRAN! You can also install the development version
from GitHub.
# Easiest way to get redlistr:
install.packages("redlistr")
# For the development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("red-list-ecosystem/redlistr")