sPlot - A new tool for global vegetation analyses

Dengler, Jurgen/0000-0003-3221-660X; Chytry, Milan/0000-0002-8122-3075; de Gasper, Andre Luis/0000-0002-1940-9581; Marceno, Corrado/0000-0003-4361-5200; Swacha, Grzegorz/0000-0002-6380-2954; He, Tianhua/0000-0002-0924-3637; Haider, Sylvia/0000-0002-2966-0534; Kuhn, Ingolf/0000-0003-1691-8249; Svenning, Jens-Christian/0000-0002-3415-0862; Jansen, Florian/0000-0002-0331-5185; Casella, Laura/0000-0003-2550-3010; Schmidt, Marco/0000-0001-6087-6117; Chepinoga, Victor/0000-0003-3809-7453; Petrik, Petr/0000-0001-8518-6737; Willner, Wolfgang/0000-0003-1591-8386; Jansen, Steven/0000-0002-4476-5334; De Sanctis, Michele/0000-0002-7280-6199; Niinemets, Ulo/0000-0002-3078-2192; Pauchard, Anibal/0000-0003-1284-3163; Vibrans, Alexander C./0000-0002-8789-5833; Biurrun, Idoia/0000-0002-1454-0433; De Patta Pillar, Valerio/0000-0001-6408-2891; Phillips, Oliver L/0000-0002-8993-6168; Sibik, Jozef/0000-0002-5949-862X; Lenoir, Jonathan/0000-0003-0638-9582; Venanzoni, Roberto/0000-0002-7768-0468; Gutierrez, Alvaro G./0000-0001-8928-3198; Cayuela, Luis/0000-0003-3562-2662; Nobis, Marcin/0000-0002-1594-2418; Agrillo, Emiliano/0000-0003-2346-8346; Manning, Peter/0000-0002-7940-2023; Venanzoni, Roberto/0000-0002-7768-0468; Virtanen, Risto/0000-0002-8295-8217; Higuchi, Pedro/0000-0002-3855-555X; Sopotlieva, Desislava/0000-0002-9281-7039; Kuzemko, Anna/0000-0002-9425-2756; Hatim, Mohamed/0000-0002-0872-5108; Mencuccini, Maurizio/0000-0003-0840-1477; Enquist, Brian J./0000-0002-6124-7096; De Bie, Els/0000-0001-7679-743X; Samimi, Cyrus/0000-0001-7001-7893; Nowak, Arkadiusz/0000-0001-8638-0208; Jimenez-Alfaro, Borja/0000-0001-6601-9597; Font, Xavier/0000-0002-7253-8905; Levesley, Aurora/0000-0002-7999-5519; Acic, Svetlana/0000-0001-6553-3797; Kattge, Jens/0000-0002-1022-8469; Silc, Urban/0000-0002-3052-699X; Arnst, Elise/0000-0003-2388-7428; Moretti, Marco/0000-0002-5845-3198; Kozub, Lukasz/0000-0002-6591-8045; Kacki, Zygmunt/0000-0002-2241-1631; Fagundez, Jaime/0000-0001-6605-7278; Purschke, Oliver/0000-0003-0444-0882; Martynenko, Vasiliy/0000-0002-9071-3789; Jandt, Ute/0000-0002-3177-3669; Peyre, Gwendolyn/0000-0002-1977-7181; SABATINI, FRANCESCO MARIA/0000-0002-7202-7697; Bruelheide, Helge/0000-0003-3135-0356; Wohlgemuth, Thomas/0000-0002-4623-0894; Onyshchenko, Viktor/0000-0001-9079-7241; Kuzmic, Filip/0000-0002-3894-7115; Ejrnaes, Rasmus/0000-0003-2538-8606; Jirousek, Martin/0000-0002-4293-478X; Noroozi, Jalil/0000-0003-4124-2359; Curran, Michael/0000-0002-1858-5612; Baraloto, Christopher/0000-0001-7322-8581; Ozinga, Wim/0000-0002-6369-7859WOS: 000466421500001Aims Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level. Results sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community-weighted means and variances of traits using gap-filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community-weighted means of key traits. Conclusions The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale.German Research FoundationGerman Research Foundation (DFG) [DFG FZT 118]; TRY initiative on plant traitsWe are grateful to thousands of vegetation scientists who sampled vegetation plots in the field or digitized them into regional, national or international databases. We also appreciate the support of the German Research Foundation for funding sPlot as one of the iDiv (DFG FZT 118) research platforms, and the organization of three workshops through the sDiv calls. We acknowledge this support with naming the database "sPlot", where the "s" refers to the sDiv synthesis workshops. The study was supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (http://www.try-db.org). For all further acknowledgements see Appendix S10. We thank Meelis Partel for his very fast and constructive feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript

sPlot:a new tool for global vegetation analyses

Abstract Aims: Vegetation‐plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co‐occurring in the same community. Vegetation‐plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level. Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community‐weighted means and variances of traits using gap‐filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community‐weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale