TreePilotics: processamento, métricas ecológicas visualização interativa para inventários florestais padronizados

Abstract

Standardized forest inventories are essential for monitoring and comparative studies of tropical ecosystems; however, their exploratory analysis often requiresprogramming skills, limiting accessibility for researchers and educators. This study presents TreePlotics, an R/Shiny dashboard that automates the ingestion, processing, and visualization of forest inventory data, focusing on portability, usability, and offline availability of its core functionalities. The system implements an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline capable of validating input data, calculating ecological attributes, and providing aggregated metrics, taxonomic rankings, spatial maps, and customizable graphical visualizations. The application was packaged with R Portable and includes code protection mechanisms based on encryption. Tests using real data (618 records) showed that the ETL pipeline processing was completed in less than 3 seconds, whereas the portable version initialization required an average of 8.5 seconds. In a stress scenario with 147,000 records (330 plots), data processing was finished in 34.3 seconds, with reactive filter response times remaining under 3 seconds. A usability assessment with five participants with different academic backgrounds indicated high ease of use for most modules, faster data exploration compared with spreadsheets, and willingness to adopt the tool in future analyses. The results demonstrate that TreePlotics reduces technical barriers to forest inventory exploration, providing a portable, secure, and accessible tool for research and educational applications.