Dataset for: 'Introducing a Glacier Forefield Monitoring Site Network to Understand Succession in the Northern Limestone Alps'

The dataset contains processed vegetation data from the BDGF monitoring platform (BDGF: Berchtesgaden-Dachstein glacier forefield), covering four glacier forefields in the Northern Limestone Alps: Hallstätter Glacier (1) and Großer Gosau Glacier (2) (both at Dachstein massif, Austria: DS), Blaueis (3) and Watzmann Glacier (4) (both at Berchtesgaden Alps, Germany: BG). It is associated with the study “Introducing a glacier forefield monitoring site network to understand succession in the Northern Limestone Alps” by Ingolf Kühn, Christian Hecht, Ulrike Herzschuh, and Dirk Scherler. In total, 52 permanent plots (each 1 m² with one hundred 10 x 10 cm² grid cells) were established along the chronosequences to study succession since deglaciation. The survey method follows the 1 m² subplot-frequency counts of the GLORIA protocol (Pauli et al., 2015). Total cover of all vascular plant species were estimated in percent. Dataset includes species richness, total frequency, provides a pre-computed Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrix of the vegetation for ordination and median frequencies of all species with median values greater than zero for each glacier forefield. Data are from 2017 (Dachstein) and 2018 (Berchtesgaden), while cover of vascular plants refers to 2022. In addition, the dataset is accompanied by the R code used to generate the main analyses and figures of the study.