NEWS

amadeus 2.0.0 (2026-05-21)

Refactored code base to improve maintainability and utilize modern R API designs and best practices
The only breaking change that should affect previous version users is the process_tri() and calculate_tri() series.

Added .by and .by_time parameters to all calculate_*() functions for consistent spatial and temporal summarization options across all datasets
The default behavior of calculate_*() functions remains unchanged - i.e., no summarization, returning extracted or summarized values at the temporal resolution of the data - but users can now specify .by for spatial grouping (e.g., by HUC, county, state) and .by_time for temporal grouping (e.g., by year, month) to obtain summarized covariate values directly from the calculation step

hms, koppen, and ecoregion datasets now have optional fraction covariate calculation that returns the fraction of each category in the radius buffer.

hms, koppen, and ecoregion datasets now have optional drop parameter that will drop or exclude categories that don't have any coverage in the radius buffer for a given point, which can help reduce the number of columns returned when many categories are possible but only a few are present in the area around the point.

workflow vignette for each dataset with detailed information on available variables, spatial and temporal resolution, and example use cases for each dataset

Moved nhdplusTools from Imports to Suggests and added requireNamespace("nhdplusTools") checks in all functions that use it

Added support for additional MODIS products with a focus on the burned area and active fire products

Added or completed the functonality for PRISM, EDGAR, CropScape, and HUC datasets

Used GitHub Copilot for help with code generation and refactoring across the code base, including function development, documentation, and unit tests; all generated code was reviewed and edited by the development team to ensure accuracy and consistency with package standards

Added download_drought(), process_drought(), and calculate_drought() supporting three drought datasets:
- SPEI (Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index): multi-year netCDF files by accumulation timescale from https://spei.csic.es
- EDDI (Evaporative Demand Drought Index): weekly files by accumulation timescale from NOAA PSL (https://downloads.psl.noaa.gov/Projects/EDDI/CONUS_archive/data/); legacy netCDF files from the CONUS_Archive path are also supported
- USDM (U.S. Drought Monitor): weekly polygon shapefiles from https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu
All three datasets are accessible via the top-level wrappers: download_data(), process_covariates(), and calculate_covariates() using aliases "drought", "spei", "eddi", or "usdm" for dataset_name / covariate.
process_drought() returns a SpatRaster (SPEI/EDDI) or SpatVector polygons (USDM), both with CRS EPSG:4326.
calculate_drought() supports .by / .by_time post-extraction summarization consistent with all other calculate_*() functions.

Completed migration of all download_* functions from httr/wget/curl command-line calls to httr2 for all network requests
Deprecated download parameter (use default download = TRUE) and remove_command parameter across all download functions; both now emit informative warnings and are ignored
Added hash parameter to all download_* functions for optional MD5 file integrity verification via download_hash() (using system md5sum)
Added unzip and remove_zip parameters to download_prism() for post-download archive handling
Added download_run_method() internal helper for unified httr2-based file retrieval with progress reporting, retry logic, and rate limiting
Improved check_url_status() for general-purpose URL validation
Expanded unit test coverage with mock-based tests for all download functions covering deprecation warnings, hash paths, and file-exists branches
Added full variable reference to download_narr() documentation, listing all 88 available NARR variable abbreviations with descriptions grouped by category (monolevel, pressure level, subsurface); resolves #194
Added download_narr() tests covering every variable abbreviation across all three variable categories
Fixed download_data() dispatch to include "edgar" so download_edgar() is reachable via the wrapper function

Fixed deprecated file paths for NLCD, MODIS, and Ecoregions datasets
Removed the certificate verification from ecoregion download which is not needed anymore
For NASA datasets MODIS, VIIRS, and Geos-CF, added additional tags in the wget scripts to prevent API throttling
httr upgraded to httr2
Modified internal URL status check function for general use
Added the news function to display the NEWS.md content within R pkgdown site
Improved the reporting in the GitHub Actions workflows

future and future.apply dependencies were removed
- nthreads argument is removed from calculate_modis_par() and calculate_nlcd()
calculate_modis_par() is renamed to calculate_modis()

calc_*() functions are renamed to calculate_*() per naming convention of other function family in the package