One sentence summary: 2Previously unreported forest areas in dryland biomes increase current estimates of the 3 global forest cover by at least 9 %. 4 List of authors:

Lysenko 91,92 | Armin Macanović 93 | Parastoo Mahdavi 94 | Peter Manning 35 | Corrado Marcenò 13 | Vassiliy Martynenko 95 | Maurizio Mencuccini 96 | Vanessa Minden 97 | Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund 54 | Marco Moretti 98 | Jonas V. Müller 99 | 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. K E Y W O R D S biodiversity, community ecology, ecoinformatics, functional diversity, global scale, macroecology, phylogenetic diversity, plot database, sPlot, taxonomic diversity, vascular plant, vegetation relevé 166 |

Summary Leaf area (LA), mass per area (LMA), nitrogen per unit area (Narea) and the leaf‐internal to ambient CO2 ratio (χ) are fundamental traits for plant functional ecology and vegetation modelling. Here we aimed to assess how their variation, within and between species, tracks environmental gradients. Measurements were made on 705 species from 116 sites within a broad north–south transect from tropical to temperate Australia. Trait responses to environment were quantified using multiple regression; within‐ and between‐species responses were compared using analysis of covariance and trait‐gradient analysis. Leaf area, the leaf economics spectrum (indexed by LMA and Narea) and χ (from stable carbon isotope ratios) varied almost independently among species. Across sites, however, χ and LA increased with mean growing‐season temperature (mGDD0) and decreased with vapour pressure deficit (mVPD0) and soil pH. LMA and Narea showed the reverse pattern. Climate responses agreed with expectations based on optimality principles. Within‐species variability contributed < 10% to geographical variation in LA but > 90% for χ, with LMA and Narea intermediate. These findings support the hypothesis that acclimation within individuals, adaptation within species and selection among species combine to create predictable relationships between traits and environment. However, the contribution of acclimation/adaptation vs species selection differs among traits.