Woody plant diversity before and after the Horseshoe Two Fire in the Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona, USA

Aim: Drastic changes in fire regimes are altering plant communities, inspiring ecologists to better understand the relationship between fire and plant species diversity. We examined the impact of a 90,000-ha wildfire on woody plant species diversity in an arid mountain range in southern Arizona, USA. We tested recent fire-diversity hypotheses by addressing the impacts of fire severity, fire variability, historical fire regimes, and topography on diversity.
Location: Chiricahua National Monument, Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona. USA., part of the Sky Islands of the US-Mexico borderlands.
Taxon: Woody plant species.
Methods: We sampled woody plant diversity in 138 plots before (2002-2003) and after (2017-2018) the 2011 Horseshoe Two Fire in three vegetation types and across fire severity and topographic gradients. We calculated gamma, alpha, and beta diversity and examined changes over time in burned vs. unburned plots and the shapes of the relationships of diversity with fire severity and ..., Woody plant presence and abundance sampled in 138 plots before and after the fire., No missing data. Nearly all columns are self-explanatory. Additional information can be found in the publication or through contacting authors., # Woody plant diversity before and after the Horseshoe Two Fire in the Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona, USA

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5x69p8d3w](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5x69p8d3w)

Data set with plots, pre-fire vs. post-fire rows, environmental predictor variables, and abundance of all woody plant species. 

## Description of the data and file structure

It's easy to navigate this data set. The main structure includes rows for before the mega fire (pre-fire) and after the fire (post-fire) for each plot (numbered in the first column). For each plot x post- or pre-fire, there are columns of data on environmental predictors: vegetation type, location, categorical fire severity (including no fire), continuous fire severity (dNBR), elevation (m), topographic position, and TRMI (topographic relative moisture index).

There are three vegetation types -- juniper, pinyon, and pine-oak -- that were determined by a cluster analysis of the abundance of species across all plots.

Fire seve...