Vascular plant abundance from a sampling grid on Mount Irony, Labrador (2013)

The data was sampled from Mount Irony, Labrador in the Canadian subarctic during the 2013 growing season. We established 176 plots positioned along a sampling grid across the south-facing slope of Mount Irony and into the lower elevation spruce moss forest and fens. At each plot, percent cover for all vascular plants within a 1.0 m2 quadrat was estimated by consensus of two independent observers, and elevation, slope and ‘sky visible’ recorded—all as continuous variables. In addition, we categorized each of the 176 plots into one of five soil moisture classes. This data set also includes plots intensively sampled from two vegetation transition areas within the sampling grid: a tundra-shrub transitional zone and a spruce moss-fen transitional zone. Similar data was collected for both of these transitional areas; however, the sampling design differed (see Methods).