Arctic Vegetation and Soil Plots at Toolik Lake, Alaska, 1989

ORNL_CLOUD provides environmental, soil, and vegetation data from 81 study plots at the Toolik Lake research site in the Brooks Range, Alaska. The dataset captures baseline plot information for vegetation, soils, and site factors across 26 communities and 4 broad habitat types. It was collected in August 1989 and has been used for classification, mapping, and analysis of geobotanical factors in the region.

Use Cases

• Classifying Arctic tundra vegetation communities using dominant species and cover data.
• Analyzing soil-vegetation relationships with attributes like soil chemistry, moisture, organic matter, and biomass pools.
• Mapping geobotanical factors and habitat types across a glaciated landscape.
• Establishing a baseline for studying long-term change in Arctic foothills ecosystems.

Strengths

• Data is spatially explicit, collected from 81 subjectively located study plots.
• Covers multiple environmental dimensions: vegetation species, cover, biomass, and detailed soil chemistry and physical characteristics.
• Represents 26 distinct plant communities and 4 broad habitat types, providing ecological context.

Limitations

• Exact row count, column names, and dataset size are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date: one states 2026-03-13, another states 1989-08-24.
• Data is from a single snapshot in time (August 1989), limiting temporal analysis.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Field data collected from subjectively located study plots.

Time Range

1989-08

Freshness

2026-03-13 14:54:13.239490

Geography

Toolik Lake research site, southern Arctic Foothills of the Brooks Range, Alaska.