Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive—A new database of plant community composition and environmental conditions

Motivation The goal of the Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA-RU) is to unite and harmonize data plot-based plant species their abundance, vegetation structure environmental variables from Arctic. This database can be used assess status as a baseline document biodiversity changes in future. archive for scientific studies well inform nature protection restoration efforts. Main types contained contains 2873 open-access geobotanical plots. include full species. Most plots information on horizontal (cover per morphological group) vertical (average height vegetation, site soil descriptions quality estimations. In addition data, AVA-RU website 1912 restricted-access Spatial location grain 1–100 m2 size were sampled Russia Scandinavia. Plots covered areas West East, including European (Kola Peninsula, Nenets Autonomous district), Western Siberia (Northern Urals, Yamal, Taza Gydan peninsulas), Central (Taymyr peninsula, Bolshevik island), Eastern (Indigirka basin) Far East (Wrangel island). About 72% samples are georeferenced. Time period collected once at each between 1927 2022. Major taxa level measurement observations >1770 vascular cryptogam subspecies. Software format CSV files (1 file with list 1 structure) stored (https://avarus.space/), continuously updated new datasets. available Dryad all datasets have backup server University Zurich. processing R script Dryad.