This lesson is being piloted (Beta version)

SCAS Workshop 2026: Setup

Before You Begin

1) Install R

  1. Go to https://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html and pick a USA mirror
  2. Download the installer for your OS:
    • Windows: Click “Download R for Windows” → “base” → download the .exe
    • Mac: Click “Download R for (Mac) OS X” → download the .pkg
  3. Run the installer. On Windows, choose “Install as administrator”. Default options are fine for both platforms.

Recommended version: R 4.0.x or newer

2) Install RStudio

  1. Go to https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/
  2. Download the RStudio Desktop (Free) version for your OS
  3. Run the installer with default options
  4. Open RStudio, you should see an active R console

Install R before RStudio so RStudio can find and link to it automatically.

3) Install R Packages

Open RStudio and run the install script below. Run it line by line, not all at once, this makes it easier to catch any errors.

Alternatively, once you’ve downloaded the workshop files (Step 4), you can just open setup.R from the folder and run it directly, it contains the same installs.

If prompted to upgrade dependent packages, choose Option 3: None. This avoids upgrading packages you didn’t intend to touch.

# Data cleaning and arrangement
install.packages('tidyverse')

# Reading parquet files into dataframes
install.packages('nanoparquet')

# Better date handling (also part of Tidyverse)
install.packages('lubridate')

# Map plotting (works alongside ggplot2)
install.packages('ggmap')

# Temporary API key for StadiaMaps — valid during the workshop only
ggmap::register_stadiamaps("b01d1235-69e8-49ea-b3bd-c35b42424b00")

# Interactive web-based charts
install.packages('plotly')

# Reading Excel files
install.packages("readxl")

# Colorblind-friendly and greyscale-compatible color scales
install.packages("viridis")

# glatos - acoustic telemetry package that does filtering, vis, array simulation, etc.
install.packages('remotes')
library(remotes) 
remotes::install_github('ocean-tracking-network/glatos')

4) Download Workshop Code and Data

Once packages are installed, download the workshop files from GitHub:

https://github.com/ocean-tracking-network/SCAS-workshop-2026/tree/master

Option A: Download ZIP (recommended for most people)

  1. Click the green “Code” button → “Download ZIP”
  2. Unzip the folder and move it somewhere stable (Desktop, Documents, etc.)
  3. In RStudio, set your working directory to that folder: 
    setwd('/path/to/folder')

Option B: Git clone

git clone https://github.com/ocean-tracking-network/SCAS-workshop-2026.git

Then set your working directory in RStudio as above.