A 2023 inventory of vegetation structure at the Miller Creek Demonstration Forest 55 years after initiation of the Plant Succession Study

These data support a publication that examined plant community structure 55 years after wildfire and clearcutting plus broadcast burning at the Miller Creek Demonstration Forest (Miller Creek) in northwest Montana. This study is known as the Plant Succession Study, and follows up on a long-term experiment conducted at Miller Creek in 1966 and then monitored over subsequent decades. In 2023 the original Plant Succession Study sample plots were relocated and monumented in 13 of the 4-hectare experimental burn units (which represent treatment units) that were used to examine post-disturbance vegetation structure. This data publication includes data collected from resampling these 13 experimental burn units in 2023. Data include: tree basal area; tree, shrub, and herbaceous vegetation cover percentage; understory plant frequency of detection, and; covariates relating to site, disturbance, and pre-disturbance vegetation that were used in modeling.
The purpose of the Miller Creek Plant Succession Study is to document plant community dynamics over the years to decades following clearcutting and one of various alternative burn treatments. A wildfire affected the site during treatment implementation and was then incorporated into the Plant Succession Study. The intention was to improve understanding of changes in the plant community following these treatments and to derive the primary drivers and potential causal mechanisms behind these changes. Long-term monitoring of post-disturbance plant community structure lapsed in the late 1990s and early 2000s due to resource constraints. The current research data entry contributes to this understanding by providing a snapshot of post-disturbance vegetation structure in 2023, following re-installation of the original Plant Succession Study sample plots.
More information about this study and these data can be found in Williams et al. (2026) and Supplement 1 provided within Williams et al. (2026).