Vascular plant community data for Northwest Territories, Canada ...

• Main Authors: Baltzer, Jennifer, Day, Nicola, White, Alison, Reid, Kirsten, Degré-Timmons, Geneviève, Cumming, Steve, Mack, Michelle, Turetsky, Merritt, Walker, Xanthe, Johnstone, Jill
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: Canada; Northwest Territories
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.76hdr7sth; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.76hdr7sth

Climate change is altering disturbance regimes outside of historical norms, which can impact biodiversity by selecting for plants with particular traits. The relative impact of disturbance characteristics on plant traits and community structure may be mediated by environmental gradients. We aimed to understand how wildfire impacted understory plant communities and plant regeneration strategies along gradients of environmental conditions and wildfire characteristics in boreal forests. We established 207 plots (60m2) in recently burned stands and 133 plots in mature stands with no recent fire history in comparable gradients of stand type, site moisture (drainage), and soil organic layer (SOL) depth in two ecozones in Canada’s Northwest Territories. At each plot, we recorded all vascular plant taxa in the understory and measured the regeneration strategy (seeder, resprouter, survivor) in burned plots, along with seedbed conditions (mineral soil and bryophyte cover). Dispersal, longevity, and growth form traits ... : 207 plots were established with 5, 1 by 1 m quadrats within which vegetation data was recorded one year after fire ...