Plant wax n-alkanoic acid and n-alkane carbon chain-length distributions and stable carbon and hydrogen isotope ratio data from terrestrial Arctic vegetation (2003-2021)

This dataset accompanies a manuscript submitted to Biogeosciences (https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3849). Terrestrially-derived plant waxes and their compound-specific stable carbon (δ13C) and hydrogen (δ2H) isotope ratios are valuable tools for inferring past changes in vegetation and hydrology in sedimentary archives. Such inferences require knowing the ecological (i.e. plant growth form) and environmental (i.e. temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, elevation) mechanisms that govern the production of different plant wax carbon chain-lengths and the fractionation of stable isotopes. These mechanisms, however, are uncertain in the Arctic, limiting our ability to infer past vegetation and hydrology changes. This dataset contains plant wax n-alkanoic acid and n-alkane carbon chain-length abundance, stable carbon isotope ratio, and stable hydrogen isotope ratio data produced from terrestrial vegetation in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and compiled from other published datasets of plants across the Arctic.