Tundra Plant Trait and Environmental Data from 6,720 Plots Across Four Regions

Data from Kemppinen et al. (2021) explores trait-environment relationships in tundra ecosystems. It combines field data from 6,720 plots and 217 species across four tundra regions with over 76,000 database trait records. The dataset relates plant community traits to environmental drivers like soil moisture, temperature, pH, and solar radiation.

Use Cases

• Modeling plant trait composition based on gradients of soil moisture and temperature mentioned in the description.
• Analyzing the consistency of leaf economic traits across Arctic and Antarctic tundra regions.
• Predicting climate change impacts on vulnerable high-latitude ecosystems using trait-environment relationships.
• Studying fine-scale environmental heterogeneity's influence on structural plant traits.

Strengths

• Data from 6,720 field plots provides a substantial observational basis.
• Includes over 76,000 trait records from databases, enhancing trait coverage.
• Covers four distinct tundra regions from both hemispheres, allowing cross-regional comparison.
• Combines field-quantified microclimate and soil data with trait measurements.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Julia Kemppinen, University of Helsinki, and co-authors.

Collection Method

Field data collection from plots combined with existing database trait records.

Geography

Four distinct tundra regions across Arctic and Antarctic hemispheres.