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2,662 results for “plant cover”
Plant species percent cover data: Biodiversity II: Effects of Plant Biodiversity on Population and Ecosystem Processes
Biodiversity II (E120) is designed to determine how the number of plant species affects the dynamics of ecological processes at the population, community, and ecosystem levels. By experimentally manipulating the number of species and the kinds of species, the amount of plant growth and the change from year to year, that result can be examined. Plots are large (9m x 9m actively maintained) and well-replicated, allowing responses of plant pathogens, insect herbivores, seed predators, soil parameters, invasive plant species and other variables to also be studied. Plots were seeded in May 1994 to have 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 species, with roughly 30 replicates of each diversity level. The species composition of each plot was chosen by random draw from a pool of 18 grassland perennials that included four warm-season (C4) grasses, four cool-season (C3) grasses, four legumes, four non-legume forbs, and two woody species. All species occur in monoculture allowing comparison of responses of each species in monoculture to combinations of these same species. The experiment was established in 1994 by the lead investigators David Tilman, Peter Reich, Johannes Knops, and David Wedin. Experiment 120 is similar to Experiment 123, but it uses larger plots to provide a large capacity for long-term subexperiments.
Plant species percent cover data: Natural Enemies, Plant Diversity and Plant Community Composition
The purpose of this experiment is to determine the influences of natural enemies, including plant pathogenic fungi and insect pests, influence plant community composition, productivity, and diversity over time. The experiment is being conducted in a subset of plots within the Big Biodiversity field, including monoculture, 2-species, 4-species, 8-species, 16-species, and 32-species plots. There are 5 different treatments: foliar fungicide, soil drench fungicide, foliar insecticide, the combination of all pesticides, and nontreated control. The pesticides are applied repeatedly throughout the growing season. Within the plots, community productivity, species composition, percent cover, and pest damage are being quantified over time.
Plant species percent cover data: The influence of natural enemies on plant community composition and productivity
The purpose of this experiment is to determine the influences of natural enemies, including plant pathogenic fungi and insect pests, influence plant community composition, productivity, and diversity over time. The experiment is being conducted in an old field that is burned every other year. Within the old field, there are 8 blocks, and within each block there are 6 treatments: foliar fungicide, soil drench fungicide, foliar insecticide, mammal exclosure, the combination of all enemy suppression tactics (pesticides and mammal exclosure), and a nontreated control. The pesticides are applied repeatedly throughout the growing season. Within the plots, community productivity, species composition, percent cover, and pest damage are being quantified over time.
Plant Species Composition percent cover:Nutrient Network: A cross-site investigation of bottom-up control over herbaceous plant community dynamics and ecosystem function.
This experiment is one implementation of a globally distributed experiment, known as the Nutrient Network. At Cedar Creek, as in over 70 other sites in grasslands around the world, the experiment aims to describe impacts of increased nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur and other metals) and decreased herbivory (removal of mammals by fencing). Two overarching questions are being explored with these manipulations: 1. To what extent are plant production and diversity co-limited by multiple nutrients in herbaceous-dominated communities? 2. Under what conditions do grazers or fertilization control plant biomass, diversity, and composition? By utilizing identical protocols at diverse grassland sites around the world, NutNet aims to uncover both the generalities in ecosystem functioning, and the contingencies or differences which can obscure those common mechanisms. In addition to the standard NutNet protocol, e247 includes an additional low Nitrogen gradient (1 gram Nitrogen per meter squared per year and 5 grams Nitrogen per meter squared per year in addition to the standard 10 grams Nitrogen per meter squared per year).
Canopy cover for 9 perennial plant taxa across grazed/ungrazed fencelines at the Jornada Basin LTER, 1982-ongoing
This ongoing data set contains percent canopy cover estimates of 6 perennial plant species and 3 genera from transects that cross a grazed/ungrazed boundary fenceline of a single exclosure on the New Mexico State University Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, USA. In the spring of 1982, as part of the establishment of the Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research site in southern New Mexico, a 135 ha portion of a 1500 ha, internally drained, watershed was exclosed from grazing by domestic livestock. Prior to exclosure the watershed, as well as the rest of the Jornada basin, had been moderately to heavily grazed for the past 100 years. Concurrent with grazing, the vegetation had undergone a dramatic change from desert grassland, with an almost continuous cover of C4 perennial grasses, to isolated patches of the original grassland in a mosaic with desert shrub dominated plant communities (Buffington and Herbel, 1965). The exclosure lies along a northeast facing piedmont slope at the base of a steep isolated mountain peak, and covers a variety of component landforms from the foot of the mountain to the basin floor. This provided the opportunity to investigate the response of vegetation with respect to landscape characteristics as well as release from grazing. This data set is limited to 6 perennial species and 3 genera because of the limited taxonomic resolution of the initial sampling in 1982. See data package knb-lter-jrn.210120001 for a dataset that contains all perennial species encountered but begins in 1986 instead of 1982. Sampling occurs approximately every five years; it was last conducted in November 2015 and will take place again in 2020.
SGS-LTER CO2 Elevation Study: Visual estimates of plant cover on the OTC project on the Central Plains Experimental Range, Nunn, Colorado, USA 1997 - 2001
This data package was produced by researchers working on the Shortgrass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research (SGS-LTER) Project, administered at Colorado State University. Long-term datasets and background information (proposals, reports, photographs, etc.) on the SGS-LTER project are contained in a comprehensive project collection within the Digital Collections of Colorado (http://digitool.library.colostate.edu/R/?func=collections&collection_id=3429). The data table and associated metadata document, which is generated in Ecological Metadata Language, may be available through other repositories serving the ecological research community and represent components of the larger SGS-LTER project collection. Additional information and referenced materials can be found: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/82454. Every month, during the growing season, from 1997-2001, 10 small quadrats were placed in ambient and elevated CO2 open-top-chambers, and plant cover, by species, was visually estimated. In general, elevated CO2 caused an increase in one C3 grass species, Stipa comata, and a small increase in forbs.
Influence of climate, soil and land cover on plant species distribution in the European Alps
<p>Although the importance of edaphic factors and habitat structure for plant growth and survival is known, both are often neglected in favor of climatic drivers when investigating the spatial patterns of plant species and diversity. Yet, especially in mountain ecosystems with complex topography, missing edaphic and habitat components may be detrimental for a sound understanding of biodiversity distribution. Here, we compare the relative importance of climate, soil and land cover variables when predicting the distributions of 2'616 vascular plant species in the European Alps, representing approximately two thirds of all European Flora. Using presence-only data, we built point-process models (PPMs) to relate species observations to different combinations of covariates. We evaluated the PPMs through block cross-validations, and assessed the independent contributions of climate, soil and land cover covariates to predict plant species distributions using an innovative predictive partitioning approach. We found climate to be the most influential driver of spatial patterns in plant species with a relative influence of ~58.5% across all species, with decreasing importance from low to high elevations. Soil (~20.1%) and land cover (~21.4%), overall, were less influential than climate, but increased in importance along the elevation gradient. Furthermore, land cover showed strong local effects in lowlands, while the contribution of soil stabilized at mid-elevations. The decreasing influence of climate with elevation is explained by increasing endemism, and the fact that climate becomes more homogeneous as habitat diversity declines at higher altitudes. In contrast, soil predictors were found to follow the opposite trend. Additionally, at low elevations, human-mediated land cover effects appear to reduce the importance of climate predictors. We conclude that soil and land cover are, like climate, principal drivers of plant species distribution in the European Alps. While disentangling their effects remains a challenge, future studies can benefit markedly by including soil and land cover effects when predicting species distributions.</p>
Vegetation cover and plant diversity on cold climate green roofs
<p>Both vegetation abundances and community compositions play important roles for the functions of green roofs (e.g. stormwater retention, habitat provision, aesthetic appearance). However, green roof vegetation can change significantly over time, which may consequently affect the functions related to them. This study investigated vascular plant covers and species compositions on 41 roof sections located in Sweden's subarctic and continental climate zones. For the roof sections with a known originally intended vascular plant composition (n=32), on average 24±9% of the intended species were present in surveys while unintended species made up 69±3% of the the species found. The Intended species dominated plant cover (93±3%) and <i>Sedum acre </i>(58±36% cover) was the most commonly found species. As revealed in previous studies, substrate depth had a positive relationship with plant cover and species richness. The vascular plant cover of the roofs in this study was not related to species richness as hypothesized but instead had a significant negative correlation with moss cover. The results in this study emphasize the importance of substrate depth for both plant abundance and species diversity, and that even in a cold climate, colonising unintended species can have a great contribution to the species richness of green roofs. However, since most colonising species formed sparse cover on the roofs, their potential benefit to green roof functions that benefit from a dense vegetation cover (e.g. stormwater management and thermal performance) could be limited while the intended vegetation performs these functions more effectively.</p>
Data from: Increases in understory plant cover and richness persist following restoration treatments in Pinus ponderosa forests
<p>A combination of forest thinning followed by prescribed burning is widely applied in the western US to increase ecosystem resistance and resilience to disturbances. Understory plant community responses may be driven both by management treatments and climatic factors. Thus, responses to treatments during a 20-year megadrought have implications for the role of management in fostering adaptive capacity to climate change.</p> <p>We used a network of five sites (600 plots) spanning an environmental gradient in ponderosa pine (<em>Pinus ponderosa</em>) forests of the American Southwest, an ecosystem that is broadly distributed and actively managed throughout the western US. We used repeated long-term monitoring data to quantify plant community responses to treatment 1-5, 6-10, and >10 years post-implementation. Specifically, we focused on the effects of treatment and abiotic conditions on native and nonnative plant cover and species richness, and on the proportion of native species with northern (cool-mesic) biogeographic affinities.</p> <p>Overall, thinning and prescribed burning nearly doubled native cover and increased native species richness by about 50% relative to untreated controls. These effects persisted for over a decade after treatment, even under the influence of significant and persistent drought. Cover and richness were also greater on intermediate to wet sites. Finally, native species with northern biogeographic affinities were reduced for up to five years after treatment relative to those with southern (warm-xeric) affinities, and in dry years, indicating that both management and interannual climate variability may foster shifts in plant communities that are more resilient to a warming climate.</p> <p>Synthesis and applications: In ponderosa pine forests of the American Southwest, tree thinning followed by prescribed burning will generally promote restoration goals of increasing resilience to climate change by enhancing the diversity and abundance of native understory plant species, even during a persistent 20-year megadrought.</p>
Data from: neglected puzzle pieces of urban green infrastructure: richness, cover, and composition of insect-pollinated plants in traffic-related green spaces
<p>Insect-pollinated vascular plants in spontaneous vegetation provide essential ecosystem services and benefit wildlife. However, floral communities associated with traffic-related green spaces are rarely considered valuable elements of urban green infrastructure (UGI). The dataset contains information on species-based floral communities of vascular insect-pollinated plants in traffic-related green spaces in three highly populated Finnish cities. Those are Helsinki (665 558 inhabitants), Tampere (244 029 inhabitants), and Turku (175 645 inhabitants). Data were collected during the mean flowering phenophase of vascular plants in July-August 2022 from two types of locations: (i) urban (city centers) and (ii) suburban (city outskirts), and from three types of traffic-related green spaces: (i) traffic islands, (ii) parking lots, (iii) road verges. The dataset contains information for the 93 vascular insect-pollinated plant species flowering during the survey. Sampling campaign was conducted in 90 sampling sites, and the dataset contains information on the location coordinates. In addition, the dataset possesses information on the amount of garbage pieces (cigarette filters, plastic boxes, or scraps) revealed for each sampling point in traffic-related green spaces.</p>
Data from: Integrating herbivore assemblages and woody plant cover in an African savanna to reveal how herbivores respond to ecosystem management
<p>African savannas are experiencing anthropogenically-induced stressors that are accelerating the increase of woody vegetation cover. To combat this, land managers frequently implement large-scale clearing of trees, which can have a cascading influence on mammalian herbivores. Studies rarely focus on how differences in woody cover influence the herbivore assemblage, making it difficult to assess how aggressive measures, or the lack of management, to counteract increasing woody cover affect the local composition and biodiversity of herbivores. We address this knowledge gap by applying a model-based clustering approach to field observations from to identify multiple herbivore–vegetation ‘configurations,’ defined as unique sets of herbivore assemblages (i.e., groups of herbivores) associated with differing woody plant covers. Our approach delineated how tree-clearing influences the distribution and abundance of the herbivore community in relation to surrounding savanna areas, which represent a natural mosaic of varying woody cover. Regardless of season, both intensively managed areas cleared of trees and unmanaged areas with high tree cover contained configurations that had depauperate assemblages of herbivores (low species richness, low abundance). By contrast, habitats with intermediate cover of woody vegetation had much higher richness and abundance. These results have substantial implications for managing African savannas in a rapidly changing climate.</p>
Data from: Trends in plant cover derived from vegetation-plot data using ordinal zero-augmented beta regression
<p><strong>Questions.</strong> Plant cover values in vegetation-plot data are bounded between 0 and 1, and cover is typically recorded in discrete classes with non-equal intervals. Consequently, cover data are skewed and heteroskedastic, which hampers the application of conventional regression methods. Recently developed ordinal beta regression models consider these statistical difficulties. Our primary question is if we can detect species trends in vegetation-plot time series data with this modelling approach. A second question is whether trends in cover have additional value compared to trends in occurrence, which are easier to assess for practitioners.</p> <p><strong>Location</strong>. The Netherlands, Western Europe.</p> <p><strong>Methods. </strong>We used vegetation-plot data collected from 10.000 fixed plots which were surveyed once every four years during 1999-2022. We used the ordinal zero-augmented beta regression (OZAB) model, a hierarchical model consisting of a logistic regression for presence and an ordinal beta regression for cover. We adapted the OZAB model for longitudinal data and produced estimates of cover and occurrence for each four-year period. Thereafter we assessed trends in cover and in occurrence across all periods.</p> <p><strong>Results.</strong> We found evidence of a trend in cover in 318 out of the 721 species (44%) with sufficient data. Most species showed similar directional trends in occurrence and percent cover. No trend in occurrence was detected for 64 species that had evidence of a trend in cover. Declining species had stronger relative changes in cover than in occurrence.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions. </strong>Our model enables researchers to detect trends in cover using longitudinal vegetation-plot data. Cover trends often corroborated trends in occurrence, but we also regularly found trends in cover even in the absence of evidence for trends in occurrence. Our approach thus contributes to a more complete picture of (changes in) vegetation composition based on large monitoring datasets.</p>
Data from: Canopy cover and soil moisture influence forest understory plant responses to experimental summer drought
<p>Extreme droughts are globally increasing in frequency and severity. Most research on drought in forests focuses on the response of trees, while less is known about the impacts of drought on forest understory species and how these effects are moderated by the local environment.</p> <p>We assessed the impacts of a 45-day experimental summer drought on the performance of six boreal forest understory plants, using a transplant experiment with rainout shelters replicated across 25 sites. We recorded growth, vitality and reproduction immediately, two months, and one year after the simulated drought, and examined how differences in ambient soil moisture and canopy cover among sites influenced the effects of drought on the performance of each species.</p> <p>Drought negatively affected the growth and/or vitality of all species, but the effects were stronger and more persistent in the bryophytes than in the vascular plants. The two species associated with older forests, the moss <em>Hylocomiastrum umbratum</em> and the orchid <em>Goodyera repens</em>, suffered larger effects than the more generalist species included in the experiment. The drought reduced reproductive output in the moss <em>Hylocomium splendens </em>in the next growing season, but increased reproduction in the graminoid <em>Luzula pilosa</em>. Higher ambient soil moisture reduced some negative effects of drought on vascular plants. Both denser canopy cover and higher soil moisture alleviated drought effects on bryophytes, likely through alleviating cellular damage.</p> <p>Our experiment shows that boreal understory species can be adversely affected by drought and that effects might be stronger for bryophytes and species associated with older forests. Our results indicate that the effects of drought can vary over small spatial scales and that forest landscapes can be actively managed to alleviate drought effects on boreal forest biodiversity. For example, by managing the tree canopy and protecting hydrological networks.</p>
New Zealand native forest plant cover data for Popovic et al. MEE (2019), Untangling direct species associations from indirect mediator species effects with graphical models.
<p>Forest cover measurements were collected at 1246 native forest sites that form part of a network of permanent 20 x 20 m plots spread throughout New Zealand. A total of 1831 plant species were present in these plots, with the most common being herbs, graminoids, ferns, shrubs and trees. Plant cover (in ordinal categories) was assessed for each species in several tiers at different heights. The cover data we analysed (<em>NZ_native_forest_cover.csv) </em>were the maximum cover recorded over all the tiers at the 964 sites identified as native forests, containing 1311 species with at least one presence. <em>NZ_native_forest_species.csv</em> contains species data including species name, exotic/native, and plant type (tree, shrub, etc.), corresponding to the plant species in the columns of <em>NZ_native_forest_cover.csv</em>.</p> <p>We acknowledge the use of data drawn from the Natural Forest plot data collected between January 2002 and March 2007 by the LUCAS programme for the Ministry for the Environment, New Zealand.</p> <p> </p>
Monitoring of plant cover for the experiment RESTAURSOL (Lil'O, Ile Saint Denis, France)
<p>The data set includes 6240 horizontal high resoltion photographies of plant cover (2292*2292, 72 ppp) for the 6 treatments of RESTAURSOL experiment. This experimentent compares different soil engineering techniques using urban wastes or topsoil extracted in rural aeras that may be implemented for the reclamation of urban soils degraded by past industrial use. It is located in Lil'O site (Ile Saint-Denis, France) :</p> <p>The following reclamation techniques are compared to a control plot with untreated degraded soil :</p> <p>1- Decompaction, 2- Decomp. + compost, 3- Decomp. + excavated materials, 4 - Decomp. + excavated materials + compost, 5 - Decomp. + topsoil</p> <p>The 6 treatments are replicated over 4 blocks, giving a total of 24 experimental plots.</p> <p>A detailled presentation of the experiment and of some results (published during the 12e SUITMA conference) are given in the [RESTAUR'SOL presenttion.pdf] file attached to the data base. </p> <p>The photographies were taken for each plots over 4 squares 1*1 m2 sub-divided in 4 squares 0.5*0.5 m2,</p> <p>For each date of the monitoring. there are 24*4 = 96 (1 *1 m2) and 24*4*4 = 384 (0.5*0.5 m2) hence a total of 480 photos </p> <p>The indexation of the photos is detailed in the [Indexation photos plant cover RESTAURSOL.xls] file</p> <p>The field surveys were carried out for the 13 following dates :</p> <p>01/10/2021; 10/11/2021; 09/12/2021; 08/02/2022; 11/03/2022; 06/04/2022; 13/05/2022; 07/06/2022; 14/02/2023; 14/03/2023; 12/04/2023; 16/05/2023; 14/06/2023</p> <p> </p>
The data table of eleven invasive species in Hungary and Romania: Invasive species' cover, invasive species' traits, basic characteristics, trait composition, functional diversity indices and soil parameters of recipient plant communities
<p>We studied 11 widespread herbaceous invasive alien species of East-Central Europe and their 16 impact metrics (resident plant communities' ecological characteristics, trait composition, functional diversity, and soil parameters) by sampling invaded and similar, uninvaded sites (space-for-time substitution method). Our aim was to (1) investigate the detailed ecological impacts of invasive plants on native plant communities; (2) explore the type of cover-impact relationships across impact metrics and their consistency across species; (3) study whether the cover-impact relationship depends on functional traits of invasive species. We present the data table with the 11 invasive species: the status of the sites (invaded, uninvaded), the cover of invasive species at plot level, the invasive species traits (lifespan, height, SLA, seed mass, clonal spread, flowering duration), community characteristics (species richness and diversity, native vegetation cover and bare ground cover at plot level), trait composition of native plant communities (native vegetation height, CWM height, CWM SLA, CWM seed mass, CWM clonal spread), functional diversity (functional richness, functional evenness, functional divergence, functional distance, RaoQ) and soil properties (N, P, organic C, pH).</p>
Activity of tjakura (great desert skinks) at burrows in relation to plant cover and predators
<p>Increased predation where ground cover is reduced after severe wildfire is increasingly implicated as a factor causing decline of vulnerable prey populations. In arid central Australia, one species detrimentally affected by repeated wildfire is the great desert skink or <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> (<em>Liopholis</em> <em>kintorei</em>), a distinctive lizard of the central Australian arid zone that constructs and inhabits multi-entranced communal burrows. We aimed to test whether <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> or predator activity at burrow entrances varied with cover and how <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> respond to predator presence. Using time-lapse photography, we monitored <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> and predator activity at the largest entrance of 12 burrows ranging from high (>70 %) to low (<50 %) cover and at multiple entrances of two other burrows. Overall activity did not vary between burrows with high and low cover. Within burrow systems, <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> were more active at sparsely vegetated entrances, often sitting wholly or partly inside the burrow. However, consistent between and within burrow systems, skinks spent proportionally more time fully outside where cover was higher. Predators – mostly native – were detected at most burrows, with no apparent relationship between predator activity and cover. Skinks also did not appear to modify their activity in response to predator visits. Our results indicate that <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> may spend more time outside burrow entrances when cover is higher, but there was no direct evidence that this related to perceived or real predation risk. Differences in food availability, thermoregulatory opportunities, and opportunities for ambush foraging associated with differences in vegetation cover or composition are other factors likely to be important in determining the activity of <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> at burrows. Our research demonstrates the usefulness of camera traps for behavioural studies of ectothermic burrowing animals. The complex relationships between <em>tjaku<span>r</span>a</em> activity and vegetation cover were thereby revealed, suggesting outcomes of fire-mediated habitat change on predator-prey interactions are not easily predictable.</p>
Orchard floor plant communities: Multispecies cover crops in commercial almond orchards
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Data from: neglected puzzle pieces of urban green infrastructure: richness, cover, and composition of insect-pollinated plants in traffic-related green spaces
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Data from: Trends in plant cover derived from vegetation-plot data using ordinal zero-augmented beta regression
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