Arctic plant biomass and nitrogen by vegetation functional group, northern Alaska, 2017-2019

Climate change is progressing rapidly in the Arctic, leading to changes in plant phenology and in the seasonal patterns of plant properties such as tissue nitrogen (N) content and aboveground biomass. The purpose of this study was to understand the environmental controls on seasonality in tissue N and biomass of Arctic vegetation across the North Slope of Alaska, and how these seasonal patterns vary among Arctic plant functional groups (i.e. shrubs, graminoids, forbs, dwarf shrubs, lichens, bryophytes). We sampled vegetation from 71 points over three years (2017-2019), visiting each point three times (June, July, Sept) during one year. Vegetation biomass and tissue N concentration was determined by vegetation functional group at each location for each time of year. This dataset contains vegetation biomass and tissue nitrogen concentration by vegetation functional group (shrub, graminoid, dwarf shrub, forb, lichen, bryophyte). These data were collected at ~75 locations in northern Alaska three times per growing season. A new set of ~25 points was sampled for three years (2017-2019).