Vegetation structure and composition in the Wassuk Range, Sweetwater Mountains, and east slope of the Sierra Nevada, Nevada and California: 2nd edition

These data document vegetation structure and composition during the late spring and summer growing season in canyons throughout three mountain ranges in the western Great Basin (Mineral, Douglas, and Lyon Counties, Nevada; and Alpine and Mono Counties, California): the Wassuk Range, Sweetwater Mountains, and east slope of the Sierra Nevada. Data on trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants were collected in 2012 and 2013 at 158 locations where breeding birds were surveyed annually from 2012 through 2014 or 2015. These types of vegetation data again were collected, with slightly different methods, in 2016, 2017, and 2018 at 161 locations where breeding birds were surveyed annually from 2016–2018. Data on the the prevalence of cheatgrass were collected from 2012 through 2014 to supplement data collected via measurements of ground vegetation, and data on the presence of all trees and shrubs were collected in 2017. The great majority of the locations were consistent over the period of record. Data include but are not limited to estimates of cover of trees (live and dead, differentiated by species), shrubs (differentiated by species), native grasses and forbs (generally not differentiated by species), and cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum); and identity and sizes or size classes of trees (live and standing dead). With the exception of the distinct cheatgrass measurements, vegetation at the great majority of locations was measured twice.
Data were collected to examine relations between abundance, occupancy, and detection probability of breeding birds and vegetation covariates. Data also will be used to train and validate models of vegetation (e.g., presence of riparian vegetation, hard and soft edges between trees and shrubs, potential changes in distribution of dominant species) that were based all or in part on remotely sensed data. Additionally, data may be used to examine responses of vegetation to fire, vegetation treatments, or other land uses.
These data serve as environmental covariates for Fleishman 2019 (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2015-0031-2). Vegetation data were collected at all locations where birds were sampled. Spatial data attributes in the breeding-bird data publication and this data publication (range, canyon, year, UTMx, UTMy) are the same and can be linked in a relational database or lookup table. Although the data primarily were collected to characterize bird habitat, they also could serve as environmental covariates for Fleishman 2015 (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2015-0030). There is a previous edition of this data publication (Fleishman 2015, https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2015-0032). This second edition adds data from 2016-2018, including point-level data on presence of all trees and shrubs, and metadata updates. We recommend the use of this newer edition.