Natural jack pine forest edges are not an earlier warning system than interior forests to detect impacts of atmospheric deposition

This dataset contains data to replicate analyses in Andrade-Silva and McIntosh (in review). In this study, our objectives were to compare between edge and interior sites: i) the foliar nutrient and trace element levels in the current annual needle growth of jack pine trees, ii) tree properties associated with jack pine growth (height and diameter growth and live crown ratio); and iii) the understory plant community composition. We used data from the two sampling periods (2012 and 2018), considering the influences of distances from the sources of emissions and wind directionality. Two types of sites were monitored in this study: interior jack pine sites and natural edge jack pine sites. Sites were standardized by choosing sites growing on coarse-grained Eluviated Dystric Brunisol soils (a1 ecosite phase – Beckingham and Archibald 1996). Sites are dry, nutrient poor, unmanaged jack pine forest stands with age at breast height ranging between 19-160 years in the 2018 sampling period. The current study includes 12 interior jack pine stands and 15 jack pine edge monitoring sites located between 4 -120 km from major oilsands mining operations within the AOSR. Data collected in the field (foliage chemistry, tree growth, and plant community composition) were obtained from field sampling campaigns from 2011-2013 (for simplicity called 2012 hereafter) and 2018.