Thirty years of permanent vegetation plots, Mount St. Helens, Washington, USA

I established 92 permanent plots on Mount St. Helens starting in 1980 in order to document vegetation recovery from volcanic disturbances. I report data in 1743 records (plot × year), containing 85 species. These represent most common species found in non-forested habitats on Mount St. Helens. Richness, percent cover, diversity (H′ and evenness), and species frequency of a plot are reported. Plots were sampled using 24 quadrats placed in the same location in each sample year by the same observer. Habitats sampled included those experiencing primary succession, secondary succession, and recovery from disturbance. These data have been used to test hypotheses concerning succession trajectories and patterns of species assembly. They also may be used to test models of succession, determine succession rates by several methods, and explore assembly processes and rules. Four files provide the data: (1) the matrix of species in each plot in each year; (2) the matrix of structural measures (e.g., richness) in each plot in each year; (3) taxonomic and life-history characteristics of species in the data set; and (4) geographic and landscape factors for each plot. The data are described in a metadata file, which includes numerous time-series images.

The complete data sets corresponding to abstracts published in the Data Papers section of the journal are published electronically in Ecological Archives at 〈http://esapubs.org/archive〉. (The accession number for each Data Paper is given directly beneath the title.)