Riparian vegetation species richness in the Elwha River estuary, Washington, in 2007 and 2014

This portion of the data release presents riparian plant species richness (number of unique taxa) data from plots sampled in the Elwha River estuary, Washington, in 2007 and 2014. In August 2007, we established 21 vegetation plots within the study area in a stratified random fashion, with three to five plots in five of the vegetation cover types denoted in the habitat classification maps: mixed riparian forest, willow-alder forest, riparian shrub, emergent marsh/marsh-shrub transition, and dunegrass. Each plot was 100 square meters, usually 10 m x 10 m, but in areas where the vegetation patch was narrow, plots were either 4 m x 25 m or 5 m x 20 m. We visually estimated percent cover by species of all vascular plants within one of ten cover classes and tallied the number of unique taxa to estimate total species richness in each plot. We resampled all plots in August 2014. Plant species richness data are provided in a comma-delimited spreadsheet (.csv).