Skip to contents

Metadata

Metadata.Rmd

Metadata holds high-level information about the country and the site-file version. The country, boundary and admin_level fields are available both at the top level of the site file (e.g. site_file$country) and, mirrored, within site_file$metadata.

Country

site_file$metadata$country

Country name

site_file$metadata$iso3c

The ISO3c code identifying the country. The R package countrycode is useful for converting between ISO3c and country names.

Boundary

site_file$metadata$boundary

The boundary file version used to create sites

Resolution

site_file$metadata$admin_level

The administrative levels (e.g. state, region, province) of the sites within the site file.

Version

site_file$metadata$version

Site file version name. Please see the change log for version information.

Sites

site_file$sites

The sites within the site file. These are the named sites disaggregated to the specified administrative level. Further disaggregation may include, for example, an urban rural split. We use the GADM administrative boundary simple feature spatial files at the first or second administrative unit level.

Sources

📍 | GADM

Shape

site_file$shape

The spatial boundary geometries for the site, stored as sf simple-feature data frames (the geometry is held in the geom column). The list contains one entry per administrative level present in the file, for example level_0 (the national outline) and level_1 (the first sub-national level). These are the GADM administrative boundaries — version 4.1.0, as recorded in site_file$metadata$boundary (GADM_4.1.0) — used to define the sites and to draw maps such as those produced by plot_site_map().

Sources

📍 | GADM

Common columns

Most of the data frames in a site file are keyed by a set of administrative columns identifying the spatial unit each row refers to. This set is not fixed — it depends on the resolution of the site file (see site_file$metadata$admin_level):

  • A country-level file may carry only country and iso3c.
  • Finer files add successive sub-national levels: name_1, and possibly name_2, name_3, and so on.
  • urban_rural is present only when an urban/rural split has been applied.

For brevity these key columns are not repeated in the per-table variable lists elsewhere in this documentation.