Arctic Vegetation Archive - Alaska: Barrow DOE NGEE-Arctic.
As part of a larger study to understand the structure and function of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems response to climate change, 48 vegetation study plots were established at the Barrow Environmental Observatory, NGEE Intensive Sampling Site 1, Areas A-D. Species cover and plot specific environmental data were recorded in 2012.
Vegetation plots were subjectively located in homogenous plant communities located along 2 perpendicular transects. Plots were distinguished as to their location within polygon rims, troughs or edges. The plots occur in four plant communities that occur in 3 habitat types including: 1) Coastal moist tundra - Carex stans, Saxifraga cernua communities (16 plots), 2) Dry coastal rush tundra (Luzula confusa) (4 plots), and 3) Wet nonacidic tundra Carex spp., Eriophorum spp.-Amblystegiaceae communities (28 plots).
Plots are 1 x 1 m with the corners permanently marked with white-1-inch PVC tubing. The canopy was assumed to have two layers i.e., the sum of vascular plant species coverage was 100 percent and the sum of moss/lichen coverage and bare ground were 100 percent.
These data were provided by the author (Victoria L. Sloan) and are in part available online, along with additional data for the Barrow Intensive Sampling Site, via the NGEE-Arctic website.
References
Iversen, C. M., Sloan, V. L., Sullivan, P. F., Euskirchen, E. S., McGuire, A. D., Norby, R. J., Walker, A. P., Warren, J. M. and Wullschleger, S. D. 2015. The unseen iceberg: plant roots in arctic tundra. New Phytol, 205: 34–58. doi:10.1111/nph.13003
Langford, Z., J. Kumar, F.M. Hoffman, R.J. Norby, S.D. Wullschleger, V.L. Sloan, C.M. Iversen. 2016. Mapping Arctic plant functional type distributions in the Barrow Environmental Observatory using WorldView-2 and LiDAR Datasets. Remote Sensing 8, 733. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs8090733
Sloan, V. L., J. D. Brooks, S. J. Wood, J. A. Liebig, J. Siegrist, C. M. Iversen, R .J. Norby. 2014a. Plant community composition and vegetation height, Barrow, Alaska, Ver. 1. Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic Data Collection (NGEE-Arctic), Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. Data set accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.5440/1129476
Sloan, V. L., J. A. Liebig, M. S. Hahn, J. B. Curtis, J. D. Brooks, A. Rogers, C. M. Iversen, and R. J. Norby. 2014b. Soil temperature, soil moisture and thaw depth, Barrow, Alaska, Ver. 1. Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic Data Collection (NGEE-Arctic), Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. Data set accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.5440/1121134
