Geographic data from Steinbeck and Ricketts 1940 trip to the Sea of Cortez. This is the original R package, which includes the data cleaning, while the python package just includes the data.
Installation
flyer is available only on github. It can be installed using remotes or devtools like so:
install.packages('devtools')
devtools::install_github('sagesteppe/flyer')
# remotes is very similar and a good alternative for this use case.
install.packages('remotes')
remotes::install_github('sagesteppe/flyer')Once installed it can be attached for use like any other package from github or CRAN
Data Accuracy
The original author is not a marine ecologist, nor nautically inclined; rather they appreciate the journey as a philosophical exploration of ecology.
The goal of this package is to provide a readily available data set for cartographic activities. In particular, a data set composed of point, and linestring geometries, rather than polygons for typical choropleth applications - such as the North Carolina SIDS data set which comes with sf. Additional advantages of the data set is that it follows a sequential series of events, allowing for intelligent use of story maps, interactive, or animations.
Consider the package very alive, which is to say I am very happy to merge increasingly accurate collection localities, or routes. I have only read the Log form the Sea of Cortez, and not Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, or any of the other true catalogs from the voyage. I have quickly poked through Brusca 2020, a wonderful read, which served as the definitive source for locations.
The ‘route’ of the Western Flyer is liberally digitized and redrawn from Penguin Classics 1995 edition of The Log from the Sea of Cortez; of which I am not sure of the actual accuracy of. I further embellished curvatures and shapes to make the data set aesthetically appealing. If you think you know the real route, as I guess would have been supplied by the Flyer (actual nautical book), let me know and I am happy to try and digitize it when I can find the time. However, if that happens, I will maintain both the aesthetic, and the authentic routes as data sets in the package.
Contributing
As mentioned, I use this data set for testing our cartographic approaches. If you are a marine biologist, into data viz, or mariner and think you have some insight - but are hesitant about this whole Github thing - shoot me an email and we can try and figure out how to incorporate your perspectives.
Download files directly
If you just want the data you can grab it here
Works Cited
Brusca, Richard C. “The 1940 Ricketts-Steinbeck Sea of Cortez Expedition, with annotated lists of species and collection sites”” Journal of the Southwest 62, no. 2 (2020): 218-334.
Sagarin, Raphael D., William F. Gilly, Charles H. Baxter, Nancy Burnett, and Jon Christensen. “Remembering the Gulf: changes to the marine communities of the Sea of Cortez since the Steinbeck and Ricketts expedition of 1940” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6, no. 7 (2008): 372-379.
An open-access nearly final version is here
Steinbeck, John. The log from the Sea of Cortez Penguin, 1995
Available from your local library, an independent bookstore, or a Barnes & Noble near you.
Spatial Data Sources
CONABIO CONANP, (09/2024). ‘Federal Protected Natural Areas of Mexico, September 2024’, National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity. Mexico City, Mexico.
GEBCO Compilation Group (2024) GEBCO 2024 Grid (doi:10.5285/1c44ce99-0a0d-5f4f- e063-7086abc0ea0f).
Robinson, N., Regetz, J., and Guralnick, R. P. (2014). EarthEnv-DEM90: A nearly-global, void-free, multi-scale smoothed, 90m digital elevation model from fused ASTER and SRTM data. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 87:2014, 57-67. Available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924271613002360
Tuanmu, M.-N. and W. Jetz. 2014. A global 1-km consensus land-cover product for biodiversity and ecosystem modeling. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23(9): 1031-1045.