ReLTER.inatEnrich: Enriching iNaturalist occurrences for eLTER-RI sites • ReLTER.inatEnrich

Overview

ReLTER.inatEnrich is a companion module for the ReLTER package. It enriches iNaturalist biodiversity occurrence records — downloaded for a specific eLTER-RI site — with conservation and legal attributes sourced from iNaturalist and the EUNIS species database.

What it adds to your occurrence data

Function	Data source	What it adds
`add_iucn_to_occ()`	iNaturalist API	IUCN Red List status per geographic scope, with links to assessments, sourced from iNaturalist checklists
`add_nativeness_to_occ()`	iNaturalist API	Nativeness / establishment means, filtered by country, directly as recorded on iNaturalist
`add_eunis_legal_to_occ()`	EUNIS species database	EU Habitats (92/43/EEC) and Birds (2009/147/EC) Directive coverage, as delivered by retrieved from the EUNIS species database
Visualization functions	—	Charts and interactive maps for enriched occurrence data, including SO contribution — see Visualization functions

Disclaimer

ReLTER.inatEnrich is designed to standardize iNaturalist data for consistent and comparable analysis. While methodological accuracy and interoperability of the results is ensured, the authors disclaim any responsibility for the quality or accuracy of the raw input data, as the functions rely entirely on variables and values provided by iNaturalist original source. Given this, users are strongly advised to perform their own data quality checks and validation, paying particular attention to the fields related to Establishment Means and IUCN status.

ReLTER ecosystem

ReLTER.inatEnrich is part of the ReLTER software ecosystem, a set of R tools developed to support data access and analysis for eLTER-RI — the European Long-Term Ecosystem, Critical Zone and Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure.

ReLTER                          ← core package (site info, occurrence download)
└── ReLTER.inatEnrich           ← this package (iNaturalist enrichment)

The core ReLTER package provides the functions used upstream of this module (get_site_speciesOccurrences(), get_site_info()). See the ReLTER repository and its citation for details.

Installation

ReLTER.inatEnrich is not yet on CRAN. Install the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("oggioniale/ReLTER.inatEnrich")

The core ReLTER package is also required:

remotes::install_github("ropensci/ReLTER")

Dependencies

ReLTER.inatEnrich imports: dplyr, purrr, httr2, sf, leaflet, ggplot2, rvest, stats.

All dependencies are installed automatically with the package.

Quick start

library(ReLTER)
library(ReLTER.inatEnrich)

# 1. Define the eLTER-RI site by DEIMS-ID
deimsid <- "https://deims.org/6b62feb2-61bf-47e1-b97f-0e909c408db8"

# 2. Download iNaturalist occurrences for the site
iNat_occ <- get_site_speciesOccurrences(
  deimsid  = deimsid,
  list_DS  = "inat",
  show_map = FALSE,
  limit    = 5000
)

# 3. Get site boundary and country
site_boundary <- get_site_info(deimsid = deimsid)
country <- site_boundary$country

# 4. Clip to site boundary
occ_in_site <- sf::st_intersection(
  x = iNat_occ$inat,
  y = site_boundary
)

# 5. Enrich with IUCN status, nativeness, and EU legal framework
occ_enriched <- occ_in_site |>
  add_iucn_to_occ() |>
  add_nativeness_to_occ(country = country) |>
  add_eunis_legal_to_occ()

# 6. Visualise
map <- create_leaflet_occ_map(occ_enriched = occ_enriched)
map

> Click the image to open an interactive map.

For a full walkthrough see the Getting Started vignette and the Technical Reference article. For an overview of all visualization outputs see the Visualization functions article.

Documentation

Full package documentation is available at: 👉 https://oggioniale.github.io/ReLTER.inatEnrich

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you find a bug, have a feature request, or want to improve the documentation:

🐛 Bug reports → open an issue
💡 Feature requests → open an issue
🔧 Pull requests → fork the repository, create a branch from main, and submit a PR describing your changes

Please follow the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct in all interactions.

Before submitting a PR, make sure that:

devtools::check()    # no ERRORs or WARNINGs
devtools::document() # documentation is up to date

Citation

If you use ReLTER.inatEnrich in your research, please cite it as:

Oggioni A., Lenzi A., Campanaro A., Bergami C. (2026). ReLTER.inatEnrich: Enriching iNaturalist occurrences for eLTER-RI sites. R package version 0.0.0.9000. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.15399015

You can also retrieve the citation from within R:

citation("ReLTER.inatEnrich")

Please also cite the core ReLTER package:

Oggioni A. et al. (2023). ReLTER: An Interface for the eLTER Community. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.16927384

License

ReLTER.inatEnrich is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3). See the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgements

This package was developed in the context of the eLTER-RI research infrastructure.

Biodiversity data are sourced from iNaturalist and legal/conservation data from the EUNIS species database (European Environment Agency) and the IUCN Red List.