GridDER

GridDER is a tool for identifying biodiversity records that have been designated locations on widely used grid systems. Our tool also estimates the degree of environmental heterogeneity associated with grid systems, allowing users to make informed decisions about how to use such occurrence data in global change studies. We show that a significant proportion (~13.5%; 261 million) of records on GBIF, largest aggregator of natural history collection data, are potentially gridded data, and demonstrate that our tool can reliably identify such records and quantify the associated uncertainties.The package can serve as a tool to not only screen for gridded points, but to quantify the geographic and environmental uncertainties associated with these records, which can be used to inform models and analyses that utilize these data, including those pertaining to global change