Lac Croche understory vegetation data set (1998-2006): Ecological Archives E088-197

The Lac Croche data set covers a nine-year period (1998-2006) of detailed understory vegetation sampling of a temperate North American forest located in the Station de Biologie des Laurentides (SBL), Québec, Canada. After having been submitted to logging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries followed by a major fire in 1923, the forest is currently in a transition state dominated by pioneer canopy tree species. The sampling design is based on the annual re-sampling of 43 permanent 400-m² plots along five transects running parallel to an elevation gradient from a lake (Lac Croche) to the top of a hill. Abundances of all understory vascular plants (tree seedlings, herbs, and shrubs) are included in the data set and are expressed either as absolute densities or cover classes, depending on life form. The location and elevation of each plot, as well as some key environmental descriptors such as slope, rockiness, canopy openness, age of the largest tree, basal area of mature trees, and a number of soil variables are also available. The Lac Croche data set should prove useful for testing hypotheses about forest vegetation dynamics at different scales, as well as to test new statistical tools developed for the analysis of the spatio-temporal variation of plant distributions. Sampling is ongoing, and new data will be added every year.