Vegetation structure (DP1.10098.001)

This data product contains the quality-controlled, native sampling resolution data from in-situ measurements of live and standing dead woody individuals, shrub groups, and non-woody perennial plants from all terrestrial NEON sites with qualifying vegetation. The exact measurements collected per individual depend on growth form, and these measurements are focused on enabling biomass and productivity estimation, estimation of shrub volume and biomass, and calibration / validation of multiple NEON airborne remote-sensing data products. In general, comparatively large individuals that are visible to remote-sensing instruments are mapped, tagged, and measured, and other smaller and understory individuals are tagged and measured but not mapped. Structure and mapping data are reported per individual per plot. Smaller individuals may be subsampled using nested subplots in order to standardize the per plot sampling effort; total sampled area data reported in the vst_perplotperyear table are required to convert measurements made using nested subplots to the plot scale. For additional details, see the user guide, protocols, and science design listed in the Documentation section in this data product's details webpage.

Latency:
The expected time from data and/or sample collection in the field to data publication is as follows, for each of the data tables (in days) in the downloaded data package. See the Data Product User Guide for more information.

vst_apparentindividual: 120

vst_mappingandtagging: 120

vst_perplotperyear: 180

vst_shrubgroup: 120

vst_non-woody: 90

vst_identificationHistory: 7