EMODnet Biology Geospatial R Tutorials

Welcome

Learn how to access and analyze marine biological and environmental data from EMODnet using R. These hands-on tutorials guide you through real-world marine spatial analysis workflows, from accessing data via web services to creating publication-ready visualizations.

Whether you’re investigating marine protected areas, exploring species distributions, or analyzing biodiversity change, these tutorials provide reproducible code and practical examples you can adapt to your own research questions.

TipNew to geospatial analysis?

If you’re unfamiliar with spatial data concepts, coordinate systems, or the difference between vector and raster data, start with our Geospatial Concepts page.

What You’ll Learn

These tutorials demonstrate how to:

  • Access marine data programmatically using EMODnet’s web services (WFS and WCS)
  • Work with vector data representing species occurrences, habitat boundaries, and human activities
  • Analyze raster data including bathymetry, species distributions, and environmental variables
  • Integrate multiple data sources from EMODnet, Copernicus Marine Service, and trait databases
  • Apply spatial operations such as intersection, masking, and point extraction
  • Visualize spatial patterns relevant to marine conservation and management

By the end of these tutorials, you’ll be able to independently access, analyze, and visualize EMODnet data for your own marine research questions.

Tutorial Series

1 Protected Areas and Subsea Infrastructure

Identifying Protected Areas Affected by Subsea Infrastructure in the North Sea

Difficulty: Beginner | Time: ~45 minutes | Data: WFS (vector)

Learn the fundamentals of accessing EMODnet WFS data by identifying marine protected areas that overlap with subsea infrastructure like pipelines and cables. This tutorial introduces spatial intersection operations and provides a foundation for marine spatial planning analyses.

You’ll work with: Marine protected area boundaries, pipeline locations, subsea cable networks, platform locations

Start Tutorial 1

2 Copepods and Fish Spawning Grounds

Characterizing Zooplankton Conditions Across Gadoid Spawning Grounds in the North Sea

Difficulty: Beginner | Time: ~45 minutes | Data: WCS (raster)

Discover how to access and analyze gridded environmental data using EMODnet WCS services. Characterize copepod distributions across whiting and haddock spawning grounds, learning raster alignment, tidy data extraction, and interactive map visualization.

You’ll work with: Copepod relative abundance grids, fish spawning ground predictions

Start Tutorial 2

3 Biodiversity Change and Depth

Relating Marine Biodiversity Change to Depth in the North Sea

Difficulty: Intermediate | Time: ~60 minutes | Data: WFS + WCS (vector + raster)

Combine vector and raster data to investigate environmental drivers of biodiversity change. Extract bathymetric values at biodiversity sampling points and explore relationships between depth and species turnover across the North Sea.

You’ll work with: Biodiversity change metrics, bathymetric depth models, vector-raster integration

Start Tutorial 3

4 Functional Traits Across Seabed Habitats

Exploring Functional Traits Across Seabed Habitats in the Aegean Sea

Difficulty: Advanced | Time: ~90 minutes | Data: WFS + WCS + External sources

Integrate EMODnet data with external trait databases and Copernicus Marine Service environmental data. Investigate how benthic species body size varies across habitat types and environmental gradients in the Aegean Sea.

You’ll work with: Benthic species occurrences, seabed habitat maps, trait databases, temperature reanalysis data

Start Tutorial 4

Who These Tutorials Are For

These tutorials are designed for:

  • Marine researchers working with spatial data on species distributions, habitats, or human activities
  • Conservation practitioners conducting marine spatial planning, MPA assessments, or environmental impact analyses
  • Data scientists interested in applying geospatial methods to marine applications
  • Graduate students learning marine ecology, spatial analysis, or data science
  • Policy analysts requiring evidence-based spatial information for marine management

Prerequisites

To get the most from these tutorials, you should have:

R Programming:

  • Basic to intermediate R skills (working with data frames, installing packages, running functions)
  • Familiarity with the tidyverse is helpful but not required
  • Experience with RStudio or similar R development environment

Geospatial Background:

  • Understanding of basic spatial concepts (coordinates, projections, spatial data types)
  • Awareness of vector vs. raster data
  • Familiarity with common spatial operations
Note

If you’re new to geospatial analysis, visit our Geospatial Concepts page for an introduction to key concepts before starting the tutorials.

Getting Started

Installation

Install the required packages using the following code:

# Install packages from CRAN
install.packages(c(
    "emodnet.wfs",
    "sf",
    "terra",
    "dplyr",
    "ggplot2",
    "tmap"
))

# Install emodnet.wcs' latest version (not yet on CRAN)
install.packages('emodnet.wcs', repos = c('https://emodnet.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))

Quick Start

  1. New to geospatial analysis? → Start with Geospatial Concepts
  2. Ready to dive in? → Begin with Tutorial 1 to learn WFS basics
  3. Interested in raster analysis? → Jump to Tutorial 2 for WCS workflows
  4. Want to combine data sources? → Try Tutorial 3 or Tutorial 4

About This Project

These tutorials are part of the EMODnet Biology initiative. Learn more about the project, contributors, and funding on the About page.