Plant community responses to functional group and species removals along biodiversity experiment vegetation transects at the Jornada Basin LTER site, 1997-2002

This dataset contains vegetative cover data of plots that have had various plant functional groups or species experimentally removed at the Jornada Basin LTER site in southern New Mexico, USA. This data was collected with the objective to distinguish the differential effects of plant community biomass, functional groups, and biodiversity within functional groups on ecosystem and plant community function. To make these distinctions, treatments were established by the selective removal of plant species or functional groups within experimental plots. There are eight treatments: control (C, no removals); four functional group removal treatments (PG, perennial grass removed; S, shrubs removed; SSh, subshrubs removed; Succ, succulents removed), and three species richness manipulation treatments. Richness manipulations included a simplified treatment (Simp), where only the single most abundant species of each growth form is preserved and all other species in the growth form are removed, a reduced‐Larrea treatment (rL), where the Larrea is assumed to be the dominant and is removed while minority components remain, and a reduced-Prosopsis treatment (rP), where Prosopis rather than Larrea is removed as the shrub dominant. Following treatments, vegetative data was collected by sampling each plot along three transects twice a year (Spring and Fall) for 5 years from 1997-2002 (no data collected in 1998). This data set consists of the date of collection, plot number, treatment type, transect number, quadrat number, species codes, two diameters, height, condition, count, record IDs, and error codes. This study is complete.