ecochange: An R‐package to derive ecosystem change indicators from freely available earth observation products

Abstract

Spatial resources accessible for the derivation of biodiversity indicators of the class ecosystem structure are sparse and disparate, and their integration into computer algorithms for biodiversity monitoring remains problematic. We describe ecochange as an R‐package that integrates spatial analyses with a monitoring workflow for computing routines necessary for biodiversity monitoring. The ecochange comprises three modules for data integration, statistical analysis and graphics. The first module currently downloads and integrates diverse remote sensing products belonging to the essential biodiversity class of structure. The module for statistical analysis calculates RasterStack ecosystem‐change representations across areas of interest; this module also allows focusing on species habitats while deriving changes in a variety of indicators, including ecosystem areas, conditional entropy and fractal dimension indices. The graphics module produces level and bar plots that ease the development of indicator reports. Its functionality is described with an example workflow to calculate ecosystem‐class areas and conditional entropy across an area of interest contained in the package documentation. We conclude that ecochange features procedures necessary to derive ecosystem structure indicators integrating the retrieval of spatially explicit data with the use of workflows to calculate/visualize biodiversity indicators at the national/regional scales.