8. Use R Packages to Prepare for WEAP

Due Nov 19, 2015 by 1:30pm
Points 100
Submitting a file upload

Learning Objectives

Write and execute computer code to automate difficult and repetitive data related

tasks
Apply skills from previous activities and assignments in a new language

Computer and Data Requirements

Data required for this assignment are historical precipitation time series for Salt Lake City, Utah (see below for specifics).
You may use any R environment. However, RStudio is recommended.

Task

In the next module of the class, we will be using WEAP (http://www.weap21.org/ Links to an external site.) to model climate change effects on the Salt Lake City watershed. One of the important inputs for the WEAP model is precipitation data. Using the WaterML package in R, obtain precipitation records for two locations near Salt Lake City (Snowbird and Parley's Summit) using the SNOTEL incremental precipitation data hosted by BYU. Describe the data using basic statistical and visual analysis. Then use RMySQL to load the SNOTEL data and NOAA precipitation records (which are in mm, and are measured at the Salt Lake City International Airport - SaltLakeAirport.csv Download SaltLakeAirport.csv ) into the MySQL database that you have created (Create an individual table for each of the precipitation records).

This assignment requires you to use data retrieval and database management skills and a number of packages in R to prepare for future modeling activities. This assignment should be completed using one or more well-documented R script file(s).

Deliverable

1) A one-page write up that includes:

a) A summary of the packages/functions and resources you used to complete the assignment?

You may want to consider the following: How useful was the package documentation? What resources were most helpful for finding functions? How was your approach for automating the data downloading process different from downloading the data "manually"? What were the advantages/disadvantages of each approach?