Plant species-level responses to functional group and species removals in biodiversity experiment plots at the Jornada Basin LTER site, 1999

This dataset contains individual species size data in vegetation
plots that have had various plant functional groups or species
experimentally removed at the Jornada Basin LTER site in southern
New Mexico, USA. This data was collected with the objective to
distinguish the differential effects of plant community biomass,
functional groups, and biodiversity within functional groups on
ecosystem and plant community function. To make these distinctions,
treatments were established by the selective removal of plant
species or functional groups within experimental plots. There are
eight treatments: control (C, no removals); four functional group
removal treatments (PG, perennial grass removed; S, shrubs removed;
SSh, subshrubs removed; Succ, succulents removed), and three species
richness manipulation treatments. Richness manipulations included a
simplified treatment (Simp), where only the single most abundant
species of each growth form is preserved and all other species in
the growth form are removed, a reduced‐Larrea treatment (rL), where
the Larrea is assumed to be the dominant and is removed while
minority components remain, and a reduced-Prosopsis treatment (rP),
where Prosopis rather than Larrea is removed as the shrub dominant.
In 1999, this pilot study attempted to assess individual species
responses of representative individuals in these treatments. Ten
randomly selected individuals of eight plant species were measured
in each experimental plot, and this dataset reports volumetric data
(diameters and height) for each. The study was designed as an
individual-based complement to the transect data in EDI dataset
knb-lter-jrn.210121001 but was not continued past 1999. This dataset
is complete.