Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive—A new database of plant community composition and environmental conditions

Abstract

MotivationThe goal of the Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA‐RU) is to unite and harmonize data of plot‐based plant species and their abundance, vegetation structure and environmental variables from the Russian Arctic. This database can be used to assess the status of the Russian Arctic vegetation and as a baseline to document biodiversity changes in the future. The archive can be used for scientific studies as well as to inform nature protection and restoration efforts.Main types of variables containedThe archive contains 2873 open‐access geobotanical plots. The data include the full species. Most plots include information on the horizontal (cover per species and morphological group) and vertical (average height per morphological group) structure of vegetation, site and soil descriptions and data quality estimations. In addition to the open‐access data, the AVA‐RU website contains 1912 restricted‐access plots.Spatial location and grainThe plots of 1–100 m2 size were sampled in Arctic Russia and Scandinavia. Plots in Russia covered areas from the West to the East, including the European Russian Arctic (Kola Peninsula, Nenets Autonomous district), Western Siberia (Northern Urals, Yamal, Taza and Gydan peninsulas), Central Siberia (Taymyr peninsula, Bolshevik island), Eastern Siberia (Indigirka basin) and the Far East (Wrangel island). About 72% of the samples are georeferenced.Time period and grainThe data were collected once at each location between 1927 and 2022.Major taxa and level of measurementPlots include observations of >1770 vascular plant and cryptogam species and subspecies.Software formatCSV files (1 file with species list and abundance, 1 file with environmental variables and vegetation structure) are stored at the AVA‐RU website (https://avarus.space/), and are continuously updated with new datasets. The open‐access data are available on Dryad and all the datasets have a backup on the server of the University of Zurich. The data processing R script is available on Dryad.

Current and past climate co‐shape community‐level plant species richness in the Western Siberian Arctic

“…To estimate community-level species richness, we used geobotanical data from the Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive (Ermokhina et al, 2022;Zemlianskii et al, 2023). These data consist of 1483 Braun-Blanquet plots established in homogenous vegetation collected during the 2005-2017 field campaigns in the Western Siberian tundra (Figure 1) (Zemlianskii et al, 2023).…”

“…To estimate community-level species richness, we used geobotanical data from the Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive (Ermokhina et al, 2022;Zemlianskii et al, 2023). These data consist of 1483 Braun-Blanquet plots established in homogenous vegetation collected during the 2005-2017 field campaigns in the Western Siberian tundra (Figure 1) (Zemlianskii et al, 2023). The data were collected following the standard international Arctic Vegetation Archive protocol (Walker et al, 2013(Walker et al, , 2016(Walker et al, , 2018 and include full species lists of vascular plants and, contrary to most other existing floristic studies of the area, also bryophytes and lichens (Elven et al, 2011;Raynolds et al, 2013).…”

“…Here, based on a newly assembled, large geobotanical dataset (Zemlianskii et al, 2023), we aim to identify the main drivers and map the patterns of community-level plant species richness, including vascular plants, mosses and lichens, in the Western Siberian tundra.…”

“…org/ stash/ share/ bF WEu ics4I XhXfj 2x vo4 or1sU Ya-Wrisk oaRUu oVdeU ) (Zemlianskii et al, 2023).…”

“…Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository ( https://datadryad.org/stash/share/bFWEuics4IXhXfj2xvo4or1sUYa‐WriskoaRUuoVdeU ) (Zemlianskii et al., 2023 ).…”