An invitation to join sPlot, the global vegetation database

Abstract

sPlot is the first vegetation-plot database with global coverage and standardised plant nomenclature. The current version, sPlot 2.1, contains more than one million vegetation plots that have been contributed by regional, national and continental databases. The data has been harmonized with the global trait database (TRY) and is currently being used to perform studies on global vegetation patterns. Undergoing projects using sPlot span from the study of global trait-environment relationships, to the description of global patterns of taxonomical, phylogenetic and functional diversity, and how these vary across scales. These are flanked by other projects focusing on either specific communities (e.g. temperate forests, mountain ecosystems) or taxonomical groups (e.g., ferns, macrophytes), often focusing on the differences between their native and exotic ranges.

We plan to foster the further development of the sPlot initiative in two directions: filling up the remaining data gaps for specific regions of the world, and granting the use of the database to a wider network of users. Indeed, sPlot is still geographically unbalanced, with many gaps outside Europe and the United States. As such we are currently looking for new vegetation databases to join sPlot 3.0 especially with data from Latin America, South Asia, Africa, Oceania and the boreal zone. We believe that sPlot can be the basis for a new generation of studies, not only to address fundamental ecological questions related to plant diversity patterns or community assembly rules, but also as an information baseline for refining interdisciplinary conservation studies in a human-dominated, changing world. With this poster we will illustrate the geographic distribution of the data currently available, the regions that need to be covered, and the main steps for becoming part of the sPlot Consortium.

Further information: https://www.idiv.de/en/sdiv/working_groups/wg_pool/splot.html