vltava: Forest vegetation in deep river valley of Vltava (Czech...

In weimea: Weighted Mean Analysis

Description

Datasets with species composition of forest vegetation, their species Ellenberg indicator values, species functional traits (compiled from databases only for herb species) and several measured environmental characteristics for each site.

Usage

data (vltava)

Format

vltava is a structured list with these items:

• spe Compositional matrix of all species (sample x species, percentage cover scale)

• ell Species Ellenberg indicator values (species x Ellenberg values for light, temperature, continentality, moisture, reaction and nutrients, compiled from Ellenberg et al. 1991).

• env Environmental variables (see Details).

• spnames Data frame with two columns: Full.species.name - original species names, and Layer - vegetation layer, in which the species occur (1 - herb layer, 23 - shrub or/and tree layer)

• herbs list with the following items, related only to the subset of herb species:

  • spe Compositional matrix of herb species (sample x species, percentage cover scale)

  • ell Species Ellenberg indicator values for herb species (species x Ellenberg values for light, temperature, continentality, moisture, reaction and nutrients)

  • traits Species functional traits for plant height (compiled from Czech flora, Kubat et al. 2002), specific leaf area (SLA) and seed weight (compiled from LEDA database, Kleyer et al. 2008).

  • spnames Data frame with two columns: Full.species.name - original species names, and Layer - vegetation layer, in which the species occur (1 - herb layer)

• all list with the following items, related to matrix with all species (trees, shrubs, herbs and juveniles)

  • spe Compositional matrix of all species (sample x species, percentage cover scale)

  • spnames Data frame with two columns: Full.species.name - original species names, and Layer - vegetation layer, in which the species occur (3 - tree layer, 2 - shrub layer, 1 - herb layer, J - juveniles of woody species)

Details

Vegetation plots, located at even distances along transects following the steep valley slopes of Vltava river valley and collected during 2001-2003. Each transect started at the valley bottom and end up at the upper part of the valley slope. Plots are of the size 10x15 m. In each plot, all species of tree, shrub and herb layer were recorded and their abundances were estimated using 9-degree ordinal Braun-Blanquette scale (these values were consequently transformed into percentage values). At each plot, various topographical and soil factors were measured or estimated (see Table below). The dataset contains 27 transects with 97 samples.

For the purpose of the current dataset, species in shrub and tree layer have been merged, juveniles removed and nomenclature have been modified according to Kubat et al. (2002). Dataset has two parts: with all (tree, shrub and herb) species (vltava$spe, $ell, $env etc.) and with subset of only herb species (vltava$herbs$spe, $ell, $traits etc.). While Ellenberg indicator values are provided for both all and only herb species subset, plant functional traits are only for subset of herb species (it would perhaps not be meaningful to compare e.g. SLA or plant height for trees and herbs). Some species indicator values and trait values remain unassigned, because they are not defined in either Ellenberg or LEDA database. Exception is SLA value for Impatiens parviflora, which in LEDA database has assigned value 148.01 mm2/mg, which seems as outlier and had been temporarily removed.

Environmental variables include:

• ELEVATION elevation [m a.s.l.]

• SLOPE inclination [degrees]

• ASPSSW aspect (deviation of plot aspect from 22.5, reaching the highest values in SSW orientation)

• HEAT.LOAD heat load, calculated from plot slope and aspect (McCune & Keon 2002), symetric along SW-NE axis

• SURFSL landform shape in the downslope direction (three-degree ordinal scale: -1 concave, 0 flat, 1 convex)

• SURFIS landform shape along the isohypse (three-degree ordinal scale: -1 concave, 0 flat, 1 convex)

• LITHIC lithic leptosols (shallow soils near rock outcrops)

• SKELETIC skeletic and hyperskeletic leptosols (stony soils on scree accumulatons)

• CAMBISOL cambisols (well-developed zonal soils)

• FLUVISOL fluvisols (water-influenced soils formed from alluvial deposits)

• SOILDPT soil depth [cm], measured by 0.7 m long iron rod (1.5 cm diameter) - average of 5 values measured in 5 places within the plot

• pH soil pH (measured in water solution)

• COVERE3 estimated cover of tree layer [%]

• COVERE2 estimated cover of shrub layer [%]

• COVERE1 estimated cover of herb layer [%]

• COVERE0 estimated cover of moss layer [%]

• COVERE32 estimated cover of tree and shrub layer [%] (merged tree and shrub estimations, using formula p.tree + p.shrub - p.tree*p.shrub

• GROUP Classsification of the sample into one of four vegetation types using numerical classification (Ward's agglomerative clustering applied on Euclidean distances using log transformed compositional data about vltava$spe matrix with herb + merged tree and shrub species).

• TBV.NO Turboveg number - unique identifier under which the plot is stored in Czech National Phytosociological Database (http://www.sci.muni.cz/botany/vegsci/dbase.php?lang=en)

• TRANSECT transect number

• LIGHT mean Ellenberg indicator values for light, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs)

• TEMP mean Ellenberg indicator values for temperature, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs)

• CONT mean Ellenberg indicator values for continentality, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs)

• MOIST mean Ellenberg indicator values for moisture, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs)

• REACT mean Ellenberg indicator values for soil reaction calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs)

• NUTR mean Ellenberg indicator values for nutrients, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs)

Author(s)

David Zeleny ([e-mail])

References

Ellenberg H., Weber H.E., Dull R., Wirth V., Werner W. & Paulissen D. 1991. Zeigerwerte von Pflanzen in Mitteleuropa. Scripta Geobotanica 18: 1-248.

Kleyer M., Bekker R.M., Knevel I.C., Bakker J.P., Tompson K., Sonnenshein M. et al. (2008) The LEDA Traitbase: a database of life-history traits of Northwest European flora. Journal of Ecology, 96, 1266-1274.

Kubat K., Hrouda L., Chrtek J. Jr., Kaplan Z., Kirschner J. & Stepanek J. (eds.) (2002) Klic ke kvetene Ceske Republiky (Key to the flora of the Czech Republic). Academia, Praha, Czech Republic.

McCune B. & Keon D. (2002): Equations for potential annual direct incident radiation and heat load. Journal of Vegetation Sciences, 13: 603-606.

Zeleny D. & Chytry M. (2007): Environmental control of vegetation pattern in deep river valleys of the Bohemian Massif. Preslia, 79: 205-222.

weimea documentation built on May 2, 2019, 4:44 p.m.