pick_main_stem changes order of tags, and does so differently for each census

[hmullerlandau]

pick_main_stem does not preserve the order of tags within a dataset, and it does not produce a consistent new order for different censuses. Thus, if pick_main_stem is applied to two different stem datasets of the same plot, the resulting "full" census datasets will have rows in different order by tag number. This generates problems if the resulting full data sets are then used with functions that assume rows are in the exact same order in different datasets, as for example assumed by all functions in the old CTFS R package. This means that, for example, calculating species-specific mortality rates using mortality.spp or for any other subset of the data will result in incorrect results. No error or warning messages are generated, however, so this problem could easily be overlooked. This problem was detected when applying pick_main_stem to the first two stem datasets for the Mpala plot.

[maurolepore]

Thanks @hmullerlandau for reporting this bug. I'm not sure if anyone is now employed to maintain fgeo. If so, I hope they can follow up. If not, do you think one or a few people in the ForestGEO community would want to become maintaining this project?

[djj4tree]

This is a major issue and I was just coming here to open the issue. If this package is not being maintained, it should probably be removed from CRAN.

[DanielZuleta]

This is a major issue and I was just coming here to open the issue. If this package is not being maintained, it should probably be removed from CRAN.

Totally agree with Dan! I still receive emails asking questions about the tt_test function and just share the original code.