Like the photo_search function, user_info typically returns large social datasets in short periods of time. The package also provides additional functionality for downloading images, getting user information and assessing related tags. The ability to refine search parameters allows for a more focused approach to using Flickr’s geotagged photographs by only returning those relevant to the study. As well as keywords, other search variables include minimum and maximum date the photograph was taken and a search location, provided as a bounding box, spatial layer or a Flickr specific location (where on earth identifier - woeid see: /places/info/24865675). Users can also limit the searches to find keywords in the photographs’ tags only.

Searches for images will then only return photos that contain the keywords in their title, description or tags. To enable the use of Flickr across different disciplines, the photo_search argument text allows for searches to be defined by keywords. A data frame containing the metadata for the photographs matching the search criteria is then returned. The photo_search function allows users to define a set of search criteria, which are then queried against the Flickr database. The photosearcher package provides a reproducible way of accessing geotagged photographs through search queries as well as several other functions that provide data sets useful for a range of ecological analysis. Software description 2.1 Software architecture Furthermore, neither the FlickrAPI package nor the INVEST tool provides users with the functionality to download the raw images or return demographic data about Flickr users. This, therefore, limits the functionality of these tools for ecological studies, which often require spatially explicit searches based on keywords, such as a target species. These tools do not provide functionality for searching based on criteria such as keywords or location. However, the FlickrAPI package only provides functions for obtaining information for a single known image and the IVEST tool only returns all images for an area. Other tools such as the Natural Capital Projects INVEST Recreational Tool ( ) have also been developed to query the Flickr API.

The existing R package “FlickrAPI” ( /web/packages/FlickrAPI/index.html) provides some limited functionality of the Flickr API within the R environment. The use of an R package for making calls to the Flickr API improves the reproducibility of studies using this data as well as giving users control over what they search.

Flickr image search