Vegetation diversity of valley bottom peatlands in the Upper Bow River Basin in Alberta, Canada.

The main goal of this research project is to characterize the vegetation diversity in mountain peatlands, since vegetation is a great indicator of wetland health due to its sensitivity to variation in environmental conditions. This data set provides species richness and percent cover data of vascular plants and bryophytes identified, to species level surveyed from one meter quadrats. Redundancies were employed to reduce sampling bias in percent cover estimates, and reduce the likelihood of missed species identifications. It also characterizes shrub and tree canopies, and canopy characteristics along several transects located in the Elbow, Ghost, and Jumping Pound Watersheds in the Upper Bow Basin in Alberta Canada. This data set is collected for the project titled Future Water for the Mountain West', which is a Pillar 3 project under the Global Water Futures Program funded by Canada First Research Excellence Fund.