DOI: 10.25573/data.25331362.v1
title: Data on environmental characteristics and plant abundances associated with trail segments on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, for 2000-2001

description: <b>Data Citation</b>Please cite this dataset asSvenning, J.-C., D. A. Kinner, R. F. Stallard, B. M. J. Engelbrecht, and S. J. Wright. 2024. Data on environmental characteristics and plant abundances associated with trail segments on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, for 2000-2001. Smithsonian Figshare. https://doi.org/10.25573/data.25331362<b>License and usage terms</b>This data is licensed as CC BY 4.0 and is thus freely available for reuse with proper citation. We ask that data users share any resulting publications, preprints, associated analysis code, and derived data products with us by emailing Jens-Cristian Svenning at svenning@bio.au.dk. We are open to contributing our expert knowledge of the study site and datasets to projects that use these data; please direct queries regarding potential collaboration to Jens-Cristian Svenning at svenning@bio.au.dk.<b>Data description</b>This is a dataset on the abundances of particular plant taxa and on environmental conditions on trail segments on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. These data are associated with the following journal publication:Svenning, J.-C., D. A. Kinner, R. F. Stallard, B. M. J. Engelbrecht, and S. J. Wright. 2004. Ecological determinism in plant community structure across a tropical forest landscape. <i>Ecology</i> 85: 2526-2538. https://doi.org/10.1890/03-0396Additional online supplemental material for the article is available at the following link:https://figshare.com/collections/ECOLOGICAL_DETERMINISM_IN_PLANT_COMMUNITY_STRUCTURE_ACROSS_A_TROPICAL_FOREST_LANDSCAPE/3298217<br><b>Files included in this repository</b><b>:</b><b>finaldata­_BCIdist_350p_5mb.txt </b>Tab-delimited text file version of the full dataset.<b>finaldata_BCIdist_350p_5mb_metadata.rtf </b>Rich text format file containing the metadata including column definitions, methods details, and references.<b>finaldata_BCIdist_350p_5mb_plus.xls </b>Excel file containing the full dataset as the first worksheet, as well as column definitions, methods info, and references in additional worksheets.<br><b>Column definitions for the dataset</b><b>:</b><br>Column names definitions (see methods for details)trail_code code for the relevant trail segment on BCI and letters indicate the trail, the numbers give the start and end of the trail section; for example, AHC_0102 indicates trail AHC between markers 1 and 2.Segment length The length of the trail segment in metersnumGAP123 Gaps in the canopy were measured with the following ordinal index: 0, no large overhead or lateral gaps; 1, either exposed to very large lateral gap or 1–4 m of the trail exposed to the sky directly overhead as part of a major gap; or 2, &gt;=5 m of the trail exposed to the sky directly overhead and opening part of major gap (July–August 2000). Stream Stream presence/absence was determined by streams crossing the trail and estimated to flow throughout the wet seasonMean %water(DW) Soil moisture was determined by collecting samples of the upper 10 cm of the soil using standard soil corers during the late dry season (28 March–3 April 2001). for3cat 12 Percentage of area in old-growth forest, as quantified by the darkest of three grey-scale class in a 1927 aerial photo. for3cat 45 Percentage of area in shorter secondary forest, as quantified by the lightest of three grey-scale classes in a 1927 aerial photo. Mean Slope Mean slope (maximum rate of change in elevation ["] between a 1-m2 cell and its eight neighbors; the variable used was the mean over all 1-m2 cells in a given trail segment).Mean lna/tanb Hydrologic index (log[A/tan (Beta)]) represents topographic runoff potential of a stratified soil. Mean soil type The trail segment mean soil type for its 1-m2 cells, each assigned 1 or 2 according to soil type. Lith 1 Percentage of area in lithology 1 (Basalt/andesite flows). Lith3 Percentage of area in lithology 3 (Caimito Volcanic).Lith4 Percentage of area in lithology 4 (Caimito Marine). ln_dist_shore Natural-log-transformed distance to shore, in meters. Mean distance between the GIS cells of a trail segment and the lake edge.Y centered N-S geographical coordinatesY2 Y squaredY3 Y cubedX Centered E-W geographical coordinatesXY The product of X and YXY2 The product of X and Y squaredX2 X squaredX2Y The product of X squared and YX3 X cubed<br>All further columns are abundances of particular plant taxa along the relevant trail segmentFull taxonomic names are given inhttps://wiley.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Appendix_A_A_total_species_list_including_family_growth_form_and_voucher_number_/3523688<b>Acknowledgments</b>We thank Sebastian Bernal for doing most of the woody plant inventory, Maria del Carmen Ruiz and David Galvéz for soil sampling and processing, and Andrés Hernandez, Osvaldo Calderón, Rolando Pérez, and Salomon Aguilar for taxonomic help. We acknowledge economic support from The Carlsberg Foundation (grants 990086/20 and 990576/20 to J.-C. Svenning), The Danish Natural Science Research Council (grants 9901835, 51-00-0138, and 21-01-0415 to J.-C. Svenning), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (to S. J. Wright and B. M. J. Engelbrecht), the U.S. Geological Survey WEBB Project, and the Smithsonian Terrestrial Environmental Sciences Program. All GIS analyses were completed at the Environmental Imaging and Computation Facility at the University of Colorado.<br><b>References</b>As of the date of this data publication (2024), these data have been used for the following publications:Svenning, J.-C., D. A. Kinner, R. F. Stallard, B. M. J. Engelbrecht, and S. J. Wright. 2004. Ecological determinism in plant community structure across a tropical forest landscape. <i>Ecology</i> 85: 2526-2538. https://doi.org/10.1890/03-0396Svenning, J.-C., B. M. J. Engelbrecht, D. A. Kinner, T. A. Kursar, R. F. Stallard, and S. J. Wright. 2006. The relative roles of environment, history and local dispersal in controlling the distributions of common tree and shrub species in a tropical forest landscape, Panama. <i>Journal Of Tropical Ecology</i> 22: 575-586. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266467406003348Muller-Landau, H. C., and J.-C. Svenning. 2024. An Introduction to Landscape-Level Variation Across the Barro Colorado Nature Monument. Chapter 2 in <i>The First 100 Years of Research on Barro Colorado: Plant and Ecosystem Science</i>, ed. H. C. Muller-Landau and S. J. Wright. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.R code for reproducing the analyses in Muller-Landau and Svenning 2024 is published atMuller-Landau, H.C. and J.-C. Svenning. 2024. Chapter 02 - An Introduction to Landscape-level variation across the Barro Colorado Nature Monument - Appendix S1 - R code and data files to construct Figure 2.Smithsonian Figshare. https://doi.org/10.25573/data.22779260<br><br><br>