sPlotOpen – An environmentally balanced, open-access, global dataset of vegetation plots

• Autores: Sabatini, Francesco Maria; Lenoir, Jonathan; Hattab, Tarek; Arnst, Elise Aimee; Chytrý, Milan; Giorgis, Melisa Adriana; Vanselow, Kim André; Vásquez Martínez, Rodolfo; Vassilev, Kiril; Vélez-Martin, Eduardo; Venanzoni, Roberto; Vibrans, Alexander Christian; Violle, Cyrille; Virtanen, Risto; von Wehrden, Henrik; Wagner, Viktoria; Walker, Donald A.; Waller, Donald M.; Wang, Hua-Feng; Wesche, Karsten; Whitfeld, Timothy J. S.; Willner, Wolfgang; Wiser, Susan K.; Wohlgemuth, Thomas; Yamalov, Sergey; Zobel, Martin; Bruelheide, Helge
• Año de publicación: 2021
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: BIG DATA; BIODIVERSITY; BIOGEOGRAPHY; DATABASE; FUNCTIONAL TRAITS; MACROECOLOGY; VASCULAR PLANTS; VEGETATION PLOTS
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co-occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. Although many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. A recent initiative, called ?sPlot?, compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. The sPlot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open-access. Here, we address both these issues by (a) resampling the vegetation plots using several environmental variables as sampling strata and (b) securing permission from data holders of 105 local-to-regional datasets to openly release data. We thus present sPlotOpen, the largest open-access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. sPlotOpen can be used to explore global diversity at the plant community level, as ground truth data in remote sensing applications, or as a baseline for biodiversity monitoring. Main types of variable contained: Vegetation plots (n = 95,104) recording cover or abundance of naturally co-occurring vascular plant species within delimited areas. sPlotOpen contains three partially overlapping resampled datasets (c. 50,000 plots each), to be used as replicates in global analyses. Besides geographical location, date, plot size, biome, elevation, slope, aspect, vegetation type, naturalness, coverage of various vegetation layers, and source dataset, plot-level data also include community-weighted means and variances of 18 plant functional traits from the TRY Plant Trait Database. Spatial location and grain: Global, 0.01?40,000 m². Time period and grain: 1888-2015, recording dates. Major taxa and level of measurement: 42,677 vascular plant taxa, plot-level records.
Fil: Sabatini, Francesco Maria. Martin-universität Halle-wittenberg; Alemania. German Centre For Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-jena-leipzig; Alemania
Fil: Lenoir, Jonathan. Université de Picardie Jules Verne; Francia
Fil: Hattab, Tarek. Université de Montpellier; Francia
Fil: Arnst, Elise Aimee. Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research; Nueva Zelanda
Fil: Chytrý, Milan. Masaryk University; República Checa
Fil: Giorgis, Melisa Adriana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina
Fil: Vanselow, Kim André. University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Alemania
Fil: Vásquez Martínez, Rodolfo. Jardín Botánico de Missouri Oxapampa; Perú
Fil: Vassilev, Kiril. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; Bulgaria
Fil: Vélez-Martin, Eduardo. ILEX Consultoria Científica; Brasil
Fil: Venanzoni, Roberto. University of Perugia; Italia
Fil: Vibrans, Alexander Christian. Universidade Regional de Blumenau; Brasil
Fil: Violle, Cyrille. Paul Valéry Montpellier University; Francia
Fil: Virtanen, Risto. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; Alemania
Fil: von Wehrden, Henrik. Leuphana University of Lüneburg; Alemania
Fil: Wagner, Viktoria. University of Alberta; Canadá
Fil: Walker, Donald A.. University of Alaska; Estados Unidos
Fil: Waller, Donald M.. University of Wisconsin-Madison; Estados Unidos
Fil: Wang, Hua-Feng. Hainan University; China
Fil: Wesche, Karsten. Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz; Alemania. Technische Universität Dresden; Alemania
Fil: Whitfeld, Timothy J. S.. University of Minnesota; Estados Unidos
Fil: Willner, Wolfgang. University of Vienna; Austria
Fil: Wiser, Susan K.. Manaaki Whenua. Landcare Research; Nueva Zelanda
Fil: Wohlgemuth, Thomas. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research; Suiza
Fil: Yamalov, Sergey. Russian Academy of Sciences; Rusia
Fil: Zobel, Martin. University of Tartu; Estonia
Fil: Bruelheide, Helge. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; Alemania