<b>Increasing grazing pressure reduces multitrophic biotic homogenization in global drylan

The BIODESERT global survey provides data on plant and soil microbial α-diversity and β-diversity from 326 plots across 98 sites in 25 countries. This dataset, created by Fangli Wei, was collected between 2016 and 2019 to evaluate the combined effects of grazing and climate on dryland ecosystems. It also includes the main codes used to run linear mixed-effects models for analyzing the diversity data.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between grazing pressure and biodiversity metrics based on the provided α-diversity and β-diversity data.
• Analyzing the combined effects of climate and land use on ecosystem structure based on the global, multi-site survey design.
• Comparing plant and microbial community responses to environmental drivers using the paired plant and soil microbial data.
• Reproducing or extending the statistical analysis of diversity patterns using the included linear mixed-effects model codes.

Strengths

• Systematic global coverage with data from 326 plots across 25 countries on six continents.
• Multitrophic data includes both plant and soil microbial (bacterial and fungal) diversity metrics.
• Includes analysis code (linear mixed-effects models) supporting reproducibility and methodological transparency.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Fangli Wei.

Collection Method

Field survey involving collection of field data and plant/soil samples from standardized 45m x 45m plots.

Time Range

2016-2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-23 13:34:00; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global, covering 98 sites in 25 countries across six continents.