Data from: Ground ice melt in the high Arctic leads to greater ecological heterogeneity ...

• Main Authors: Becker, Michael S., Davies, T. Jonathan, Pollard, Wayne H, Pollard, Wayne H.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2019
• Subjects: Recent; species richness; biodiversity; Permafrost; Plant–climate interactions; ice-wedges; polar desert; thermokarst; Determinants of plant community diversity and structure; climate change; Arctic; Arctic Archipelago; Climate change; Ice; permafrost; Thermokarst; wedge*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5n628; http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.5n628

1. The polar desert biome of the Canadian high Arctic Archipelago is currently experiencing some of the greatest mean annual air temperature increases on the planet, threatening the stability of ecosystems residing above temperature-sensitive permafrost. 2. Ice wedges are the most widespread form of ground ice, occurring in up to 25% of the world's terrestrial near-surface, and their melting (thermokarst) may catalyze a suite of biotic and ecological changes, facilitating major ecosystem shifts. 3. These unknown ecosystem shifts raise serious questions as to how permafrost stability, vegetation diversity, and edaphic conditions will change with a warming high Arctic. Ecosystem and thermokarst processes tend to be examined independently, limiting our understanding of a coupled system whereby the effect of climate change on one will affect the outcome of the other. 4. Using in-depth, comprehensive field observations and a space-for-time approach, we investigate the highly structured landscape that has emerged ... : Thermokarst Site MetadataMetadata of edaphic, abiotic, location, site-specific characteristics to match plot-level community matrix data as specified in paper methodology.Becker_thermokarstSite_metadata.csvCommunity Matrix of Vascular Vegetation at Thermokarst SiteCommunity presence/absence percent cover data for species found at thermokarst site. For further information on species lists please see paper methodology.Becker_thermokarstSite_community.csvPhylogenetic TreeOur calibrated phylogenetic tree used for analysis. For construction details please see methods section of our paper. Nomenclature and genetic information from Saarela et al. (2013).treecal.tre ...