Floristic and soil data from 420 subplots across six dune stages in the Southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot, collected between 2011 and 2012. The dataset accompanies a 2016 paper investigating plant community changes in response to long-term soil development. It includes plant species counts, canopy cover estimates, and a range of soil chemical and physical properties.
Use Cases
- Modeling plant community turnover based on soil age and nutrient gradients mentioned in the description
- Investigating nutrient-acquisition strategy distributions across a soil chronosequence
- Analyzing the relationship between soil phosphorus, nitrogen, and local plant species diversity
- Studying the filtering effect of high soil pH on regional flora in young dune soils
Strengths
- Data from 60 permanent 10m x 10m plots with seven subplots each, totaling 420 sampling points
- Includes a wide range of soil chemical analyses such as phosphorus fractions, exchangeable cations, and pH
- Stratified sampling design across six distinct dune stages spanning soil development up to ~2 million years
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au
Provenance
- Source
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery
- Collection Method
- Field surveys using a randomised stratified design within permanent plots and subplots, with soil samples analyzed at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
- Time Range
- Surveys conducted between August 2011 and March 2012, and September 2012.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-13 12:04:51.862055; freshness should be verified
- Geography
- Jurien Bay dune chronosequence, Southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot.