sPlot – A new tool for global vegetation analyses

Helge Bruelheide (1) , Jurgen Dengler (2) , Borja Jiménez‐alfaro (3) , Oliver Purschke (3) , Stephan M. Hennekens (4) , Milan Chytrý (5) , Valério D. Pillar (6) , Florian Jansen (7) , Jens Kattge (8) , Brody Sandel (9) , Isabelle Aubin (10) , Idoia Biurrun (11) , Richard Field (12) , Sylvia Haider (13) , Ute Jandt (14) , Jonathan Roger Michel Henri Lenoir (15) , Robert Peet (16) , Gwendolyn Peyre (17) , Francesco Maria Sabatini (13) , Marco Schmidt (18) , Franziska Schrodt (12) , Marten Winter (19) , Svetlana Aćić (20) , Emiliano Agrillo (21) , Miguel Alvarez (22) , Didem Ambarli (23) , Pierangela Angelini (24) , Iva Apostolova (25) , Mohammed Arfin Khan (26) , Elise Arnst (27) , Fabio Attorre (21) , Christopher Baraloto (28) , Michael Beckmann (29) , Christian Berg (30) , Yves Berg (31) , Erwin Berg (32) , Anne Bjorkman (33) , Viktoria Bondareva (34) , Peter Borchardt (35) , Zoltán Botta‐dukát (36) , Brad Boyle (37) , Amy Breen (38) , Henry Brisse , Chaeho Byun (39) , Marcelo Cabido (40) , Laura Casella (41) , Luis Cayuela (42) , Tomáš Černý (43) , Victor Chepinoga (44) , Janos Csiky (45) , Michael Curran (46) , Renata Ćušterevska (47) , Zora Dajić Stevanović (48) , Els de Bie (49) , Patrice de Ruffray (50) , Michele de Sanctis (51) , Panayotis Dimopoulos (52) , Stefan Dressler (53) , Rasmus Ejrnæs (54) , Mohamed Abd El‐rouf Mousa El‐sheikh (55) , Brian Enquist (37) , Jörg Ewald (56) , Jaime Fagúndez (57) , Manfred Finckh (35) , Xavier Font (58) , Estelle Forey (59) , Georgios Fotiadis (60) , Itziar García‐mijangos (61) , Luis Gasper (62) , Valentin Golub (34) , Alvaro Gutierrez (63) , Mohamed Hatim (64) , Tianhua He (65) , Pedro Higuchi (66) , Dana Holubová (5) , Norbert Hölzel (67) , Jürgen Homeier (32) , Adrian Indreica (68) , Deniz Işik Gürsoy (69) , Steven S. Jansen (70) , John Janssen (71) , Birgit Jedrzejek (67) , Martin Jiroušek (5) , Jürgen Jürgens (35) , Zygmunt Kącki (72) , Ali Kavgaci (73) , Elizabeth Kearsley (74) , Michael Kessler (75) , Ilona Knollová (5) , Vitaliy Kolomiychuk (76) , Andrey Korolyuk (77) , Maria Kozhevnikova , Łukasz Kozub , Daniel Krstonošić , Hjalmar Kühl , Ingolf Kühn , Anna Kuzemko , Filip Küzmič , Flavia Landucci , Michael T. Lee , Aurora Levesley , Ching‐feng Li , Hongyan Liu (78) , Gabriela Lopez Gonzalez , Tatiana Lysenko , Armin Macanović , Parastoo Mahdavi , Peter Manning (79) , Corrado Marcenò , Vassiliy Martynenko , Maurizio Mencuccini (80) , Vanessa Minden , Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund , Marco Moretti (81) , Jonas Müller , Jérôme Munzinger (82) , Ülo Niinemets , Marcin Nobis (83) , Jalil Noroozi , Arkadiusz Nowak (84) , Viktor Onyshchenko , Gerhard Overbeck (85) , Wim Ozinga (4) , Anibal Pauchard , Hristo Pedashenko , Josep Peñuelas (86) , Aaron Pérez‐haase , Tomáš Peterka , Petr Petřík , Oliver L. Phillips , Vadim Prokhorov , Valerijus Rašomavičius , Rasmus Revermann , John Rodwell , Eszter Ruprecht , Solvita Rūsiņa , Cyrus Samimi , Joop H.J. Schaminée (87) , Ute Schmiedel , Jozef Šibík , Urban Šilc , Željko Škvorc , Anita Smyth , Tenekwetche Sop , Desislava Sopotlieva , Ben Sparrow , Zvjezdana Stančić , Jens Svenning , Grzegorz Swacha , Zhiyao Tang , Ioannis Tsiripidis (88) , Pavel Dan Turtureanu , Emin Uğurlu , Domas Uogintas , Milan Valachovič , Kim André Vanselow , Yulia Vashenyak , Kiril Vassilev , Martin Vélez‐martin , Robert Venanzoni , Christian Vibrans , Cyrille Violle (89) , Risto Virtanen , Henrik von Wehrden , Viktoria Wagner , Donald Walker , Desalegn Wana , Evan Weiher (90) , Karsten Wesche (91) , Timothy Whitfeld , Wolfgang Willner (92) , Susan Wiser , Thomas Wohlgemuth (93) , Sergey Yamalov , Georg Zizka , Andrei Zverev

1 DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - German Research Foundation
2 Universität Bayreuth
3 Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg
4 University of Nijmegen
5 MUNI - Masaryk University [Brno]
6 UFRN - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte [Natal]
7 University of Rostock
8 MPI-BGC - Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
9 Department of Biology, Santa Clara University,
10 GLFC - Great Lakes Forestry Centre
11 Department of Plant Biology and Ecology (Bilbao, Spain)
12 UON - University of Nottingham, UK
13 Institute of Biology, Geobotany and Botanical Garden
14 Philips Research Europe - Hamburg, Sector Medical Imaging Systems
15 EDYSAN - Ecologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés - UMR CNRS 7058
16 Department of Biology [Chapel Hill]
17 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering [Bogota]
18 BIK-F - Senckenberg biodiversität und klima forschungszentrum
19 iDiv - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
20 Department of Agrobotany, Belgrade-Zemun, Serbia
21 UNIROMA - Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" = Sapienza University [Rome]
22 Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
23 Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, Düzce University
24 ISPRA ROME ITA
25 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
26 Forestry & Environmental Science, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh
27 Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research [Lincoln]
28 International Center for Tropical Botany, Department of Biological Sciences, International Center for Tropical Botany,
29 Department Computational Landscape Ecology [UFZ Leipsig]
30 UCPH - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet
31 Centre for Forest Research, Institute for Integrative Systems Biology, Université Laval, Quebec, QC, Canada
32 Georg-August-University = Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
33 BIOCHANGE - Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World
34 Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin, Russian Academy of Science
35 UHH - Universität Hamburg
36 MTA Centre for Ecological Research [Tihany]
37 University of Arizona
38 UAF - University of Alaska [Fairbanks]
39 Yonsei University
40 Universidad de Córdoba = University of Córdoba [Córdoba]
41 Università degli Studi di Udine - University of Udine [Italie]
42 URJC - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos [Madrid]
43 CZU - Czech University of Life Sciences Prague
44 ICBFM SB RAS - Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine [Novosibirsk, Russia]
45 University of Pecs
46 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]
47 Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics [Maribor]
48 Faculty of Agriculture [Belgrade]
49 INBO - Research Institute for Nature and Forest
50 IBMP - Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes
51 UNIVERSITY OF ROME - University of Rome
52 University of Patras
53 Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum
54 Aarhus University [Aarhus]
55 KSU - King Saud University [Riyadh]
56 IMSB - Institute for Molecular Systems Biology [ETH Zurich]
57 UDC - University of A Coruña
58 UB - Universitat de Barcelona
59 ECODIV - Étude et compréhension de la biodiversité
60 TEI - Technological Educational Institution of Sterea Ellada
61 UPV / EHU - University of the Basque Country = Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
62 University of Blumenau
63 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique
64 Tanta University
65 Curtin University
66 UDESC - Santa Catarina State University
67 WWU - Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster = University of Münster
68 Transilvania University of Brasov
69 Manisa Celal Bayar University
70 Institute for Systematic Botany and Ecology
71 WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
72 UWr - University of Wrocław [Poland]
73 Central Anatolia Forestry Research Institute
74 UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University
75 UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich
76 Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
77 SB RAS - Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
78 Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry
79 UNIBE - Universität Bern / University of Bern
80 School of Geosciences [Edinburgh]
81 Research Unit Ecosystem Boundaries
82 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
83 UJ - Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie = Jagiellonian University
84 AIT - Austrian Institute of Technology [Vienna]
85 UFRGS - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul [Porto Alegre]
86 CEAB - Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes
87 Centre for Ecosystem Studies, University of Wageningen
88 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
89 CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive
90 UWEC - University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
91 Department of Botany
92 VINCA - Vienna Institute for Nature Conservation and Analyses
93 Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL

Aims :Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level. Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community-weighted means and variances of traits using gap-filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community-weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale.

Mots clés: Vascular plant; Taxonomic diversity; sPlot; Plot database; Global scale; Functional diversity; Ecoinformatics; Macroecology Phylogenetic diversity; Community ecology; Biodiversity; Vegetation relevé

Domaines: Systématique, phylogénie et taxonomie; Biodiversité et Ecologie; Botanique; Ecosystèmes

Helge Bruelheide, Jurgen Dengler, Borja Jiménez‐alfaro, Oliver Purschke, Stephan M. Hennekens, et al.. sPlot – A new tool for global vegetation analyses. Journal of Vegetation Science, 2019, 30 (2), pp.161-186. ⟨10.1111/jvs.12710⟩. ⟨hal-02132381⟩