Data from: "Soil moisture mediates alpine life form and community productivity responses to warming"

This dataset contains values that were used to support conclusions drawn in the publication “Soil moisture mediates alpine life form and community productivity responses to warming”, originally published in 2016 by Winkler et al. All data were collected in the alpine site of the Alpine Treeline Warming Experiment (ATWE), located on Niwot Ridge, in the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, USA. The file types in this archive include comma-separated-values (.csv) files, and two types of geospatial files: .kml and shapefiles (.shp). The csv files can be opened by R, Microsoft Excel, or any simple text editor software. The geospatial files can be opened by Google Earth/Google Maps, and the ESRI shapefiles can be opened by geographic information systems softwares that can read shapefiles, including ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop suite, and QGIS. Climate warming is expected to alter primary production and community composition in alpine systems around the globe. Whether production will increase in response to warming in the absence of additional precipitation remains underexplored. We experimentally warmed an alpine plant community on Niwot Ridge, Colorado to test whether warming increases or decreases productivity of multiple plant life form groups and the entire plant community. We also provided supplemental water to a subset of plots to alleviate potential drying effects of warming. We predicted alpine community above-ground productivity would increase in response to warming only when combined with supplemental water to limit soil drying. We also predicted plant life form groups would vary in their responses and would like buffer changes in community productivity.

本数据集包含用于支撑Winkler等于2016年发表的学术论文《土壤湿度介导高山植物生活型与群落生产力对增温的响应》("Soil moisture mediates alpine life form and community productivity responses to warming")所得结论的相关数据。所有数据采集于美国科罗拉多州落基山脉前陆地带尼沃特岭(Niwot Ridge)的高山林线增温试验(Alpine Treeline Warming Experiment, ATWE)样地。本归档文件包含逗号分隔值(comma-separated-values, .csv)文件，以及两类地理空间文件：.kml与形状文件(shapefiles, .shp)。其中，.csv文件可通过R、Microsoft Excel或任意简易文本编辑器打开；地理空间文件可通过Google Earth/Google Maps加载查看，而ESRI形状文件可通过支持形状文件读取的地理信息系统软件打开，包括ESRI的ArcGIS Desktop套件与QGIS。全球高山生态系统中，气候增温预计将改变其初级生产力(primary production)与群落组成。在无额外降水的前提下，增温是否会提升群落生产力仍有待深入探究。为此，我们在科罗拉多州尼沃特岭对高山植物群落开展原位增温实验，以检验增温对多类植物生活型群组及整个植物群落的生产力会产生促进还是抑制作用。我们还对部分实验样地(plot)施加了额外水分，以缓解增温可能引发的土壤干旱效应。我们提出如下研究假说：仅当增温配合额外水分补给以抑制土壤干旱时，高山群落的地上生产力(above-ground productivity)才会提升。同时我们预测，不同植物生活型群组的响应会存在差异，并会对群落生产力的变化起到缓冲作用。