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WorldClim Bioclimatic Variables at Trial Sites

Source: R/env_data_collection_src.R
get_bioclim.Rd

Returns the 19 standard bioclimatic indices (BIO1-BIO19) for each site, from the 1970-2000 WorldClim 2.1 normals.

Usage

get_bioclim(
  env.id = NULL,
  lat = NULL,
  lon = NULL,
  vars = 1:19,
  resolution = c("2.5m", "5m", "10m", "30s"),
  dir.path = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

env.id

character. Environment identifiers.

lat, lon

numeric. Site coordinates (decimal degrees).

vars

integer or character. Which indices, e.g. c(1, 12) or c("BIO1", "BIO12"). Default all 19.

resolution

character. "10m", "5m", "2.5m" or "30s". Default "2.5m".

dir.path

character. Cache directory.

verbose

boolean.

Value

data.frame with env, LAT, LON and one column per requested index. Units follow WorldClim: temperature indices in C, precipitation in mm, BIO3/BIO4/BIO15 dimensionless or percent.

What these are, and are not

Bioclim variables are LONG-TERM CLIMATE NORMALS, not the weather of your trial year. They describe the climate a site is drawn from, so they are appropriate for characterising a TPE, clustering locations, or as static site covariates. They are NOT a substitute for get_weather() + env_phenology() when you want to explain what happened in a particular season: a site's BIO1 is identical in a drought year and a wet year. Mixing normals and realised weather in one kernel without saying which is which is a common and serious error.

References

Fick, S.E. & Hijmans, R.J. (2017) WorldClim 2: new 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 37(12), 4302-4315. doi:10.1002/joc.5086

O'Donnell, M.S. & Ignizio, D.A. (2012) Bioclimatic predictors for supporting ecological applications in the conterminous United States. U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 691.

Examples

# \donttest{
sites <- data.frame(env = c("PIRA", "SETE"),
                    lat = c(-22.7, -19.4), lon = c(-47.6, -44.2))
bc  <- get_bioclim(env.id = sites$env, lat = sites$lat, lon = sites$lon)
#> ---------------------------------------------------------------
#> get_bioclim -- WorldClim 2.1 bioclimatic variables
#> Last updated at 09/27/2026
#> ---------------------------------------------------------------
#>   - downloading wc2.1_2.5m_bio.zip (this is a large file)
#>   - extracting
#>   - extracted 19 index/indices for 2 site(s)
bc2 <- get_bioclim(sites$env, sites$lat, sites$lon, vars = c(1, 12))
#> ---------------------------------------------------------------
#> get_bioclim -- WorldClim 2.1 bioclimatic variables
#> Last updated at 09/27/2026
#> ---------------------------------------------------------------
#>   - extracted 2 index/indices for 2 site(s)
# }