Data from: Human paths have positive impacts on plant richness and diversity: a meta-analysis

We assess the impacts of human paths, trails and roads on plant species
richness and Shannon diversity. Most reviews of this topic have not
considered community-level measures, and have focused on excessive tourism
impacts. We found significant positive effects of paths on plant richness
and diversity. The effect size for richness was highest when studies
included roads (paved) or trails (unpaved). The effect size found for
diversity was highest when studies were in grasslands. We also found
experimental designs comparing high levels of path use to low levels of
path use, near-to-path vs. far-from-path and path-presence vs.
path-absence comparisons obtained the largest effect sizes. There was no
evidence that non-native species explained most increases in species
richness or diversity. The effect sizes of human paths on plant
communities are comparable in magnitude to those reported for other
mammals’ disturbance and ecosystem engineering activities.