Vegetation surveys at CAP LTER ripirain-area bird-monitoring locations in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area (2013)

Over the past half-century, the greater Phoenix metropolitan area (GPMA) has been one of the fastest growing regions in the US, experiencing rapid urban expansion in addition to urban intensification. This backdrop provides an ideal setting to monitor biodiversity changes in response to urbanization, and the CAP LTER has been using a standardized point-count protocol to monitor the bird population throughout the GPMA and surrounding Sonoran desert region since 2000. A subset of these bird-monitoring sites are located in riparian areas, and additional riparian-area monitoring locations centered on the Salt River as it runs through the GPMA were added in 2013 and 2014. In May and June of 2013, the CAP LTER surveyed the vegetation in 6,400 square meter plots around all of these riparian-area sites as part of an analysis of change in bird abundance and community composition. This dataset catalogs the results of vegetation surveys at nineteen bird-monitoring sites in riparian areas of the GPMA.