neonPlantEcology: An R package for preparing NEON plant data for use in ecological research.

• NEON plant diversity data are not ready for most ecological analysis out of the box. • neonPlantEcology is an R package for accessing and formatting these data. • It aggregates to 5 spatial and 3 temporal scales aligned with the sampling design. • It provides functions for a workflow from raw data to analysis-ready data. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale endeavor of ecological data collection for 30 years. We created a software package, neonPlantEcology that automatically arranges the raw data from the plant presence and percent cover (DP1.10058.001) data product from NEON into tables familiar to plant ecologists. Because of the broad scale of the observatory, it is necessary to tailor the data collection to the idiosyncrasies of each of 47 different ecosystems. Furthermore, data collection practices are occasionally modified for various reasons. These complexities, along with the volume and multiscalar nature of the data, need to be understood and accounted for in order to correctly process the data. This is particularly true for the plant diversity data product. We present three case studies using the package, centered around the three primary functions of neonPlantEcology. By automating the process of preparing NEON's plant diversity data, neonPlantEcology makes it more accessible to a wide range of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]