Vegetation change across 37 years in Arctic tundra sites on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska

This dataset contains long‑term vegetation and caribou‑use monitoring data collected from permanent transects on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska, between 1981 and 2018. The dataset is divided into two components representing the region’s dominant habitat types: tussock tundra and upland tundra. Each component summarizes vegetation functional group cover, environmental attributes, and caribou utilization metrics derived from repeated sampling of Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH) winter range monitoring plots. The tussock tundra dataset includes transect‑level summaries of percent cover for forage lichens, total lichens, forbs, graminoids, shrubs, mosses, and litter, along with indicators of burn history, community type, topographic position, and soil texture. These data represent 28 tussock tundra transects sampled across multiple time periods and are used to evaluate long‑term trends in lichen availability, graminoid expansion, and post‑fire vegetation recovery. The upland tundra dataset includes similar vegetation functional group summaries but also incorporates a broader suite of environmental covariates, including latitude, longitude, elevation, slope, modeled incident solar radiation, soil pH, active layer depth, and soil temperature. Upland transects represent a more heterogeneous set of habitats (e.g., Dryas tundra, fellfield, ericaceous shrublands) and are used to assess vegetation change in relation to edaphic and geomorphic gradients. Both datasets include caribou utilization metrics, expressed as the frequency of grazed or disturbed sampling frames. Burned and unburned transects are identified, enabling analysis of wildfire effects on vegetation composition and forage lichen recovery. Together, these datasets provide a multi‑decadal record of tundra vegetation dynamics across two major habitat types in northwestern Alaska. They support analyses of climate‑driven ecological change, wildfire impacts, and long‑term trends in caribou winter forage availability, and are intended to inform BLM habitat management and Western Arctic Caribou Herd conservation planning.