Data for "Wolves and beavers potentially trigger a rare aspen seedling event in Yellowstone"

Overview

The Excel file "all_vegetation_data.xlsx" contains all relevant data for the publication:

Beschta, R.L., Ripple, W.J., Kauffman, J.B., Goralogia, G.S. "Wolves and beavers potentially trigger a rare aspen seedling event in Yellowstone." Ecology (2023).

The dataset file consists of four spreadsheets: 2011 - Height & Browse, 2022 - Tree hts, 2022 - Understory Frequency, 2022 - Structural diversity

Summary of Methods

At the Glen Creek site with aspen (Populus tremuloides) seedlings, we collected plant information in 2011 and 2023. In September 2011, eleven 20-m wide belts were established perpendicular to the main NW-SE axis of the stand, and within each belt we selected the ten tallest aspen, for a total of 110 plants. Using a plant architecture methodology, we determined the height (cm) and occurrence of browsing (yes/no) at annual growth nodes over the life of each plant. In July 2022, we characterized aspen and willow (Salix spp.) heights on six randomly established 2 x 5 m plots. Also, along a randomly located 20-m transect we determined species composition and frequency of understory vegetation within twenty 50 x 50 cm plots.

More Information

Metadata, including variable descriptions and units of measurement are provided in the dataset file itself. For more information on data collection methods, please see Beschta et al. (2023), which is cited above.