Table of Contents
Forest vegetation data from Vltava river valley
Source of data
Zelený & Chytrý (2007)
Description of the dataset
Vegetation plots, located in even distances along transects following the steep valley slopes of Vltava river valley and collected during 2001-2003. Each transect started at the valley bottom and end up at the upper part of the valley slope. Plots are of the size 10×15 m. In each plot, all species of tree, shrub and herb layer were recorded and their abundance was estimated using 9-degree ordinal Braun-Blanquette scale (these values were consequently transformed into percentage). At each plot, various topographical and soil factors were measured or estimated (see Table below). The dataset contains 27 transects with 97 samples in total.
Locality
Vltava river valley close to Zlatá Koruna, Český Krumlov, Czech Republic. The transects follow the slopes of various aspect, and only the sites with natural or semi-natural forest vegetation were selected (no forest plantations).
The file with coordinates, which can be opened in Google Earth: vltava.kml 1)
Environmental variables
| Name of variable | Description |
|---|---|
| PLOT | plot number |
| ELEVATION | elevation [m a.s.l.] |
| SLOPE | slope [°] |
| ASPSSW | aspect (deviation of plot aspect from 22.5°, reaching the highest values in SSW orientation) |
| HEAT.LOAD | heat load, calculated from plot slope and aspect (McCune & Keon 2002) |
| SURFSL | landform shape in the downslope direction (three-degree ordinal scale: -1 concave, 0 flat, 1 convex) |
| SURFIS | landform shape along the isohypse (three-degree ordinal scale: -1 concave, 0 flat, 1 convex) |
| LITHIC | lithic leptosols (shallow soils near rock outcrops) |
| SKELETIC | skeletic and hyperskeletic leptosols (stony soils on scree accumulatons) |
| CAMBISOL | cambisols (well-developed zonal soils) |
| FLUVISOL | fluvisols (water-influenced soils formed from alluvial deposits) |
| SOILDPT | soil depth [cm], measured by 0.7 m long iron rod (1.5 cm diameter) - average of 5 values measured in 5 places within the plot |
| pH | soil pH (measured in water solution) |
| COVERE3 | estimated cover of tree layer [%] |
| COVERE2 | estimated cover of shrub layer [%] |
| COVERE1 | estimated cover of herb layer [%] |
| COVERE0 | estimated cover of moss layer [%] |
| COVERE32 | estimated cover of tree and shrub layer [%] (merged tree and shrub estimations, using formula p.tree + p.shrub - p.tree*p.shrub |
| GROUP | four vegetation types (group of samples) as determined by numerical classification (using Vltava data with herbs + merged trees and shrubs, log1p transformed and applied Ward clustering with Euclidean distance) |
| SPEC.NO | number of species per plot (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
| TBV.NO | Turboveg number - unique identifier under which the plot is stored in Czech National Phytosociological Database (http://www.sci.muni.cz/botany/vegsci/dbase.php?lang=en) |
| TRANSECT | transect number |
| LIGHT | mean Ellenberg indicator values for light, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
| TEMP | mean Ellenberg indicator values for temperature, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
| CONT | mean Ellenberg indicator values for continentality, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
| MOIST | mean Ellenberg indicator values for moisture, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
| REACT | mean Ellenberg indicator values for soil reaction calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
| NUTR | mean Ellenberg indicator values for nutrients, calculated as unweighted mean from data in Vltava spe (herbs + merged trees and shrubs) |
Data for download
- vltava.xlsx - excel file, containing the species × sample matrix, environmental variables, explanation of species abbreviations and metadata
Direct import of data into R
vltava.env <- read.delim ('http://www.davidzeleny.net/anadat-r/data-download/vltava-env.txt')
References
- Zelený D. & Chytrý M. (2007): Environmental control of vegetation pattern in deep river valleys of the Bohemian Massif. - Preslia, 79: 205-222 pdf