Plant density measurements in ITEX and ARCSS plots at Barrow and Atqasuk, Alaska

• Main Author: Robert Hollister
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2016
• Subjects: 1x5; Barrow; Atqasuk; Alaska; tundra; ARCSS; grid; Tundra
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A2T67B

These files contain data representing the plant cover and counts of individuals in 5, 10cm by 10cm square subplots at Barrow and Atqasuk in a text tab delimited format. The 5 subplots were established in existing plots. These include 96 ITEX plots and a subset of 30 ARCSS grid plots in Barrow and 96 ITEX plots and a subset of 30 ARCSS grid plots in Atqasuk. The data presented were collected from 2011-20XX. The data were gathered by establishing 5 10 cm by 10 cm squares in each plot. In each square careful counting was done to determine the number of live individuals for all vascular plants. Counts were also made of juvenile individuals, diseased individuals, standing dead individuals, inflorescences and eaten individuals. There is some variation in how individuals were counted, depending on the species; for shrubs and mat forbs counts were branch tips, for all other counts were rosettes, tillers or clearly defined individuals. In addition to individual counts, cover assessment was done for each square. The cover assessment data include non-vascular plants and non-living material (bare ground, feces, etc). All standing dead cover is represented with one measurement (STADEA, see Data Details), so that cover of a given species refers to live cover. Due to the limitations of field identification many species were lumped into larger taxa.