Seasonal and annual dynamics of western Canadian boreal forest plant communities: A legacy data set spanning four decades.

As boreal forests rapidly warm due to anthropogenic climate change, long-term baseline community data are needed to effectively characterize the corresponding ecological changes that are occurring in these forests. The combined seasonal dynamics (SEADYN) and annual dynamics (ANNDYN) data set, which documents the vegetative changes in boreal forests during the snow-free period, is one such source of baseline community data. These data were collected by George H. La Roi and colleagues in Alberta, Canada from 1980 to 2015 within permanent sampling plots established in the Hondo-Slave Lake area (eight stands; 1980-2015) in central Alberta and the Athabasca Oil Sands (AOS) region (17 stands; 1981-1984) near Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta. Various data were collected, with temporal and spatial coverage differing by data set. These data sets include, but are not limited to, cover of each identified vascular plant and bryoid (moss, liverwort, and lichen) species; forest mensuration; forest litter production; and soil temperature and moisture. Notably, permanent sampling plots were set up as a grid, which will facilitate analyses of spatial relations. These data can be used to analyze long-term changes in seasonal dynamics and succession within boreal forest communities and serve as a baseline for comparison with future forest conditions in unmanaged, managed, and reclaimed forests. Data are released under a CC-BY license; please cite this data paper when using the data for analyses.