ggsql: A grammar of graphics for SQL Introducing ggsql, a grammar of graphics for SQL that lets you describe visualizations directly inside SQL queries.

I am excited beyond description to lift the veil on what we have been working on in 2026:

Please meet ggsql! A new extension of the SQL language for creating visualisations using the grammar of graphics. Read all about it in the blog post or visit the website at ggsql.org

GitHub - belian-earth/spacelaser: An R package for cloud optimised partial reading of GEDI and IceSat data. An R package for cloud optimised partial reading of GEDI and IceSat data. - belian-earth/spacelaser

Still a WIP but I've been building a new #rstats 📦 for cloud optimised reads of #GEDI and IceSat-2 data. It's 20 x quicker than direct download and saves 10-100s of GiB on disk. The #rust powered hdf5 parser is crazy fast - with help from the 🤖.
belian-earth.github.io/spacelaser/ #rspatial #rextendr

Excellent tweetorial by @ericjpedersen.bsky.social on Simon Wood’s new Neighborhood Cross Validation smoothness selection method, which is especially useful when fitting data with temporal and spatial dependence among observations

This looks like an amazing dataset, exploring an important shift in European plant communities.

Can we please move on from analysing ad-hoc community summaries from multi-species data? The statistical problems run so much deeper than people appreciate.

This is a flyer advertising the monthly Funk Biogeography Seminar series hosted by The International Biogeography Society. The society logo is at the top of the flyer in natural colors, followed by various images of Earth's fauna and flora, such as dolphins and sunflowers. The text advertises the seminar content: the title is "Forecasting like a climate scientist- predicting biodiversity change in the Anthropocene." The speaker is Dr. Damaris Zurell from the University of Potsdam, and the seminar will take place on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, at 1:00PM UTC. Additional information and registration can be found at www.biogeography.org.

Dr. Damaris Zurell (University of Potsdam) will be giving April's Funk Biogeography Seminar! What does forward-looking biodiversity modeling look like? What can it tell us, and what needs more work?
Learn more and register at: www.biogeography.org/news/news/ap...

In our next WSL Biodiversity Seminar (8 April), Lalasia Bialic-Murphy @wslresearch.bsky.social will discuss the demographic functional diversity of forests across biogeographic gradients.

The seminar is hybrid, and everyone is welcome!
biodiversitycenter.wsl.ch/en/events/de...

Today I’m excited to finally start a project I’ve been wanting to launch for a long time: Color for #Geoscience. 🎨🌍

ℹ️ to build an open, community‑driven collection of palettes
📄 Contribution: github.com/dominicroye/...
🌐 APP dominicroye.github.io/color-for-ge...

#ScientificVisualization #dataviz

European #forests, #grasslands, and #alpine plant communities are reflecting climate warming differently

See our new study in @nature.com
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

#forestREplot #GLORIAnetwork #thermophilization #forestecol

This is a flyer advertising the monthly Funk Biogeography Seminar series hosted by The International Biogeography Society. The society logo is at the top of the flyer in natural colors, followed by various images of Earth's fauna and flora, such as dolphins and sunflowers. The text advertises the seminar content: the title is "Biodiversity Patterns in Environmental Space." The speaker is Dr. Catherine Graham from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, and the seminar will take place on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at 1:00PM UTC. Additional information and registration can be found at www.biogeography.org.

Dr. Catherine Graham (Swiss Federal Research Institute, WSL) is our Funk Biogeography Seminar speaker this month! Join us for an exploration of the past, present, and future of studying biodiversity in environmental space.

Learn more and register at: www.biogeography.org/news/news/ma...

Scientific Color Maps V8 - Integrates "Scientific color maps V8" into the style manager

QGIS users: ATTENTION!

We now have a convenient #QGIS plugin to integrate the latest version of the Scientific colour maps directly into the style manager: plugins.qgis.org/plugins/scie...

Shout-out and big thanks to Silvain Théry. ⭐️

Happy mapping, everyone! #UseBatlow 🐡

Have you used the CAST R package?

We’re running a short survey on use cases, challenges, and feature needs.
Your input will guide CAST priorities during developer days in Mar 2026.

🔗 uni-muenster.sciebo.de/apps/forms/2...

#RStats #RSpatial #OpenSource

☀️Hotter and drier conditions under ongoing climate change are causing tree mortality events and altering forest dynamics worldwide.

🧑‍💻Learn more in the webinar:
☀️Limits and opportunities in predicting drought-induced forest mortality
🗓️24 March 2026; 🕓4:00 pm CET

🔗 zoom.us/meeting/regi...

🌲 A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for the NASA’s new PACE mission: introduction to PACE’s hyperspectral, near daily observations of the world’s forest ecosystems Workshop!🌲

Registration for ForestSAT 2026 is now open: carlos-alberto-silva.github.io/silvalab/For...

Forest interactions Explore plant interactions in forest environments at all levels from micro- to macro-scales and across the whole spectrum of plant biology.

Save the date!

48th New Phytologist Symposium: Forest interactions

📅 13–16 October 2026
📍 Leysin, Switzerland

www.newphytologist.org/events/48-nps

#PlantScience

What's new in the world of Generalized Additive Models YouTube video by Bottom of the Heap

🚨 GAMs have moved on—so it’s time for an update.

On March 3, 2026 (17:00–19:00 CET) I’ll be livestreaming an updated introduction to Generalized Additive Models in R

📺 YouTube livestream link: youtube.com/live/A9U8e1K...

#RStats #mgcv #GAMs #gratia #statistics 🧪

MEB 2026 - Meb-Network

We just extended the talk/poster abstract submission deadline for the next international microclimate conference! You can now register until March 1st at meb-network.com/meb-2026/
Thank you for your great contributions so far! 🌅

Examples of how to use the new futurize package

Oooh love this. Easiest way to parallelise anything in #rstats. Just add futurize() to your favourite function call

www.jottr.org/2026/01/22/f...

Thanks @henrikbengtsson.bsky.social HT @rstats.blaze.email

🗺️ fastfocal: fast moving-window and point extraction for rasters in R, optimized for large windows and common focal stats via FFT. Built on terra.

https://cran.r-project.org/package=fastfocal

#RStats #GIScience #RSpatial

How old do herbs live? New research by Jitka Klimešová, from the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The picture above portrays one of the ways to determine the age of living parts of a clonal plant: fi…

New on the Belowground blog: How old do herbs live? plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com/2026/01/21/h...

Hi Kryštof, Congratulation!!! What is next? :)

Back from holiday and it's finally time to post about this. I am taking on a section editor role for the new diamond open access journal Biogeography, put together by @biogeographyjfab.bsky.social. That means that it's free to publish and free to read. (thread)

biog.journals.sup.org/index.php/bi...

Forests in Šumava and Bavarian Forest NP are getting wild - describing their structure with #LiDAR was very helpful for #microclimate modelling.
Here are a just few pics from the #fieldwork:

We paired #microclimate with #LiDAR to create 5m resolution temperature grids for the #BohemianForestEcosystem (NP Šumava and NP Bavarian Forest)🍁

Beside large microclimatic variability, our data reveals also systematic differences from #SoilTemp, #ForestTemp and #ERA5-Land

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Introducing the NASA Earthdata Plugin for QGIS!

With the NASA Earthdata plugin, you can search, filter, preview, and download NASA datasets directly inside QGIS, no programming needed. It’s designed for anyone who wants fast, seamless access to NASA data within their existing GIS workflow.

wow, Pekka - ecohydrology? Congratulation anyway :))

Hi, we (labgis.ibot.cas.cz) combine different technologies to monitor biodiversity and vegetation change. For examples of using different RS techniques in ecology, see e.g. doi.org/10.1016/j.rs... or
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Proximal microclimate: Moving beyond spatiotemporal resolution improves ecological predictions Aim The scale of environmental data is often defined by their extent (spatial area, temporal duration) and resolution (grain size, temporal interval). Although describing climate data scale via thes...

or doi.org/10.1111/geb....

🚀 Exploring COGs (Cloud‑Optimized GeoTIFFs) in R with the terra package (e.g., visualizing the internal tile structure).

See: guide.cloudnativegeo.org/cloud-optimi...

#RStats #RSpatial #Geospatial #CloudNativeGeo #GISchat

Side-by-side comparison of two multi-panel bubble charts faceted by world region. The left column shows the default facet labels placed above each panel (“Africa”, “Americas”, “Asia”, “Europe”, “Oceania”). The right column shows the same charts, but the facet labels are moved inside each panel at the top-left using a negative margin. In the center, there is a title reading “Want to place your facet labels inside each panel?” with an arrow pointing right, followed by a short ggplot2 theme code snippet demonstrating how to move strip text inside the panel.

I ignored the strip.clip argument in #ggplot2 for way too long 😲

Combined with a small negative margin tweak, you can place facet labels inside each panel. A tiny trick that makes small multiples feel so much cleaner.

🔵 no manual coordinates
🔵 inherits theme styling
🔵 scales nicely when resizing

A growing list of 2026 geospatial conferences is live 🌍

URL: github.com/Nowosad/conf...

If you know of additional GIS or remote-sensing events, please contribute. PRs and suggestions are welcome.

#GISchat #Geospatial #SpatialData #Conferences2026