splotopen — sPlotOpen global vegetation plots (1888-2015)

Description

Bipartite network of vegetation plots and the vascular plant species recorded in them, from sPlotOpen, an open-access, environmentally balanced subset of sPlot, the global database of vegetation plots. The plots come from 105 source datasets (vegetation-plot databases of the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases, GIVD) and cover all continents and biomes; they were recorded between 1888 and 2015 by many surveyors, who listed the plant species present in a plot of a given area and estimated their abundance (usually their cover). The plots were selected so as to balance the environmental conditions (climate and soil) of the world, in three partially overlapping resampled sets of about 50,000 plots each (marked by vertex properties), which are meant to be used as replicates in global analyses.

Nodes are plots and species (with names resolved to a common taxonomic backbone), and an edge connects a plot to each species recorded in it, with the abundance of the species in the plot; a species can be listed several times in a plot (e.g. in several vegetation layers, or under several original names resolved to the same species), which gives parallel edges. The plots also have the community-weighted means and variances of plant functional traits computed by sPlot (sPlotOpen_CWM_CWV.txt), and their bibliographic metadata (sPlotOpen_metadata.txt: the references of the source datasets and of the publications of the plots, the names of the surveyors, the original identifiers), with the references in BibTeX format (sPlotOpen_references.bib) as a graph property. The data are those of version 76 (2023-03-07) of the dataset in the iDiv data repository.

The network has the following properties:

(Node) is_plot: whether the node is a plot (otherwise it is a species).
(Node) name: the identifier of the plot (PlotObservationID), or the name of the species.
(Node) givd_id, dataset: the GIVD code and the name of the source dataset of the plot.
(Node) continent, country, biome: the continent, country and biome (as defined by sPlot) of the plot.
(Node) date: the date of recording of the plot (as Unix time; -1 if unknown).
(Node) latitude, longitude, location_uncertainty: the coordinates of the plot (WGS84) and their uncertainty in meters.
(Node) releve_area: the area of the plot, in square meters.
(Node) plant_recorded: the group of plants recorded in the plot (e.g. All vascular plants).
(Node) elevation, aspect, slope: the elevation (m), aspect and slope (degrees) of the plot.
(Node) is_forest: whether the plot is a forest, as estimated from the growth forms of the species (empty if unknown).
(Node) esy: the habitat of the plot in the EUNIS classification (European plots).
(Node) naturalness: 1 for natural and 2 for semi-natural vegetation (NaN if unknown).
(Node) forest, shrubland, grassland, wetland, sparse_vegetation: the vegetation type of the plot as given by the data contributors (TRUE, FALSE, or empty if unknown).
(Node) cover_total, cover_tree_layer, cover_shrub_layer, cover_herb_layer, cover_moss_layer, cover_lichen_layer, cover_algae_layer, cover_litter_layer, cover_bare_rocks, cover_cryptogams, cover_bare_soil: the cover (in %) of the vegetation and of its layers, and of litter, rocks and bare soil (NaN if not given).
(Node) height_trees_highest, height_trees_lowest, height_shrubs_highest, height_shrubs_lowest (m), height_herbs_average, height_herbs_lowest, height_herbs_highest (cm): the heights of the vegetation layers (NaN if not given).
(Node) soilclim_pc1, soilclim_pc2: the coordinates of the plot on the first two principal components of its climate and soil conditions.
(Node) resample_1, resample_2, resample_3, resample_1_consensus: whether the plot belongs to each of the three resampled sets (and to the first one after replacements).
(Node) species_richness: the number of species in the plot (-1 for species).
(Node) traitcoverage_cover, traitcoverage_pa: the proportion of the relative cover of the species of the plot for which the traits are available, and the proportion of the species with trait information.
(Node) <trait>_cwm, <trait>_cwv: the community-weighted mean and variance in the plot of 18 plant functional traits (from the gap-filled data of the TRY database, as computed by sPlot; the values are apparently on a logarithmic scale, since they can be negative; NaN if not given, e.g. the variances of plots with a single species with traits): leafarea (leaf area, mm²), stemdens (stem specific density, g/cm³), sla (specific leaf area, m²/kg), leafc_perdrymass, leafn, leafp (leaf carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus content per dry mass, mg/g), plantheight (plant height, m), seedmass (seed dry mass, mg), seed_length (mm), ldmc (leaf dry matter content, g/g), leafnperarea (leaf nitrogen per area, g/m²), leafnpratio (leaf N/P ratio), leaf_delta_15n (leaf δ15N, per mil), seed_num_rep_unit (seed number per reproduction unit), leaffreshmass (leaf fresh mass, g), stem_cond_dens (stem conduit density, mm⁻²), disp_unit_leng (dispersal unit length, mm), wood_vessel_length (wood vessel element length, μm).
(Node) db_bibtexkey: the BibTeX key of the reference of the source dataset of the plot (in the graph property references).
(Node) releve_author, releve_coauthors: the names of the authors or surveyors of the plot, as given in the data.
(Node) biblioreference, bibtexkey: the bibliographic reference of the publication in which the plot was described, and its BibTeX key (in references).
(Node) nr_table_in_publ, nr_releve_in_table: the table of the publication containing the plot, and the identifier of the plot in it.
(Node) original_nr_in_database, original_plotid, original_subplotid: the identifiers of the plot (and subplot, for nested plots) in the source database.
(Node) project, remarks: the project in which the plot was recorded, and remarks.
(Node) guid: the unique identifier given by Turboveg when the plot was first stored.
(Edge) relative_cover: the abundance of the species in the plot, normalized to sum to one in each plot.
(Edge) original_abundance, abundance_scale: the abundance of the species as in the original data, and its scale (CoverPerc: cover percentage, pa: presence or absence, x_BA: basal area, x_IC: individual count, x_SC: stem count, x_IV: relative importance, x_RF: relative frequency; the values x_PF and x, also found in the data, are not documented).
(Edge) original_species: the name of the species in the original data, before the taxonomic resolution (one of them is garbled in the data, with invalid characters, which are replaced by �).
(Graph) references: the references of the source datasets and of the publications of the plots, in BibTeX format (sPlotOpen_references.bib).

Tags

Biological Ecological Weighted Bipartite Multigraph Metadata

Added

2026-10-31

Citation

F. M. Sabatini, J. Lenoir, T. Hattab, E. A. Arnst, M. Chytrý, J. Dengler, P. De Ruffray, S. M. Hennekens, U. Jandt, F. Jansen, et al., "sPlotOpen – An environmentally balanced, open-access, global dataset of vegetation plots." Global Ecology and Biogeography 30, 1740-1764 (2021) 10.1111/geb.13346 Sci-Hub

Upstream URL OK

https://idata.idiv.de/ddm/Data/ShowData/3474?version=76
https://doi.org/10.25829/idiv.3474-40-3292

Upstream license

Creative Commons licenses of the source datasets (CC BY, CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC), https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13346

Networks

Tip: hover over a column header for a description.

Column legend

$\left<k\right>$: Mean degree
$\sigma_k$: Standard deviation of the degrees
$\lambda_h$: Largest eigenvalue of the Hashimoto (non-backtracking) matrix
$\tau$: Random walk mixing time
$r$: Degree assortativity
$c$: Global clustering coefficient
$\oslash$: (Pseudo-) diameter
$S$: Relative size of the largest component
NPs: Node properties
EPs: Edge properties

Name	Nodes	Edges	$\left<k\right>$	$\sigma_k$	$\lambda_h$	$\tau$	$r$	$c$	$\oslash$	$S$	Kind	Mode	NPs	EPs	gt	GraphML	GML	csv
splotopen	137,633	1,943,306	28.24	95.67	194.32	99.76	-0.17	0.00	12	1.00	Undirected	Bipartite	is_plot name givd_id dataset continent country biome date latitude longitude location_uncertainty releve_area plant_recorded elevation aspect slope is_forest esy naturalness forest shrubland grassland wetland sparse_vegetation cover_total cover_tree_layer cover_shrub_layer cover_herb_layer cover_moss_layer cover_lichen_layer cover_algae_layer cover_litter_layer cover_bare_rocks cover_cryptogams cover_bare_soil height_trees_highest height_trees_lowest height_shrubs_highest height_shrubs_lowest height_herbs_average height_herbs_lowest height_herbs_highest soilclim_pc1 soilclim_pc2 resample_1 resample_2 resample_3 resample_1_consensus traitcoverage_cover species_richness traitcoverage_pa leafarea_cwm stemdens_cwm sla_cwm leafc_perdrymass_cwm leafn_cwm leafp_cwm plantheight_cwm seedmass_cwm seed_length_cwm ldmc_cwm leafnperarea_cwm leafnpratio_cwm leaf_delta_15n_cwm seed_num_rep_unit_cwm leaffreshmass_cwm stem_cond_dens_cwm disp_unit_leng_cwm wood_vessel_length_cwm leafarea_cwv stemdens_cwv sla_cwv leafc_perdrymass_cwv leafn_cwv leafp_cwv plantheight_cwv seedmass_cwv seed_length_cwv ldmc_cwv leafnperarea_cwv leafnpratio_cwv leaf_delta_15n_cwv seed_num_rep_unit_cwv leaffreshmass_cwv stem_cond_dens_cwv disp_unit_leng_cwv wood_vessel_length_cwv db_bibtexkey releve_author releve_coauthors biblioreference bibtexkey nr_table_in_publ nr_releve_in_table original_nr_in_database original_plotid original_subplotid project remarks guid	relative_cover original_abundance abundance_scale original_species	38.7 MiB	55.2 MiB	54.9 MiB	62.3 MiB

Ridiculograms^*

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