CoRRE Trait Data: A collection of 17 categorical and continuous traits for nearly 6000 grassland species worldwide

In our changing world, it is critical to understand and predict plant community responses to global change drivers. Plant functional traits promise to be a key predictive tool for many ecosystems, including grasslands, however their use requires both complete plant community and functional trait data. Yet, representation of these data in global databases is incredibly sparse, particularly beyond a handful of most used traits and common species. Here we present the CoRRE Trait Database, spanning 17 traits (9 categorical, 8 continuous) anticipated to predict species’ responses to global change for 5,917 vascular plant species across 196 plant families present in 551 grassland experiments from around the world. The database contains complete categorical trait records for all 4,079 plant species, obtained from a comprehensive literature search. Additionally, the database contains nearly complete coverage (99.97%) of species mean values for continuous traits for a subset of 3,891 plant species across 168 plant families, predicted from observed trait data drawn from TRY and a variety of other plant trait databases using Bayesian Probabilistic Matrix Factorization (BHPMF) and multivariate imputation using chained equations (MICE). These data will shed light on mechanisms underlying population, community, and ecosystem responses to global change in grasslands worldwide.