AEKOS Australian Vegetation sPlot Extraction 

The AEKOS Australian Vegetation sPlot dataset consists of high quality, well-described plot-based data extracted from the AEKOS (portal.aekos.org.au) on 11/11/2014. The data includes vegetation records for the following datasets: Australian Ground Cover Reference Sites Database, Biological Survey of South Australia - Vegetation Survey - Biological Database of South Australia, Atlas of NSW database: VIS flora survey module, Queensland CORVEG Database, TERN AusPlots Rangelands, Transect for Environmental Monitoring and Decision Making (TREND), AusCover Supersites SLATS Star Transects, Biological Survey of the Ravensthorpe Range (Western Australia).The portal's vegetation plot data was extracted using the portal's download feature to obtain the full extent of available data for the all datasets. In addition, an average cover value was calculated for each site using a slight modification of the ingestion scripts normally used to ingest the source data into AEKOS. The altitude values derived from a map layer using the site coordinates were obtained from the AEKOS index. Finally, land use and vegetation type were derived from map layers using the site coordinates. These data were loaded in different tables of a PostgreSQL database. Subsequently, two SQL queries were built to centralise the available data in two tables: table r_site containing the site specific data and table r_speciesobservations containing the individual data on observed specimen. A PostgreSQL backup file containing these two table was then built using the pg_dump tool. The dataset can be reused for contintental-wide or global synthesis of the cover of Australian vegetation. 

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. The dataset is derived from the following datasets which are publicly available from aekos.org.au: Australian Ground Cover Reference Sites Database (ABARES), Biological Survey of South Australia - Vegetation Survey, Biological Survey of South Australia - Vegetation Survey, Biological Database of South Australia (Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources), Queensland CORVEG Database (Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts)), TERN AusPlots Rangelands (TERN AusPlots), Transect for Environmental Monitoring and Decision Making (TERN TREND), AusCover Supersites SLATS Star Transects (TERN AusCover), Biological Survey of the Ravensthorpe Range (Department of Parks and Wildlife, Western Australia). Aekos uses the following layer to derive additional information: - 3 second SRTM Derived Smoothed Digital Elevation Model (DEM-S) Version 1.0 (Geoscience Australia) Aekos also uses the National Species List for vegetation taxon concepts (Atlas o 

This dataset was generated as a contribution of TERN Eco-informatics to the sPlot Consortium's database. The sPlot Consortium is a working group of currently 50 members from around the world resulting from the first Workshop of the Synthesis Centre (sDiv) of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). Aims: The trait composition of plant communities is determined by abiotic, biotic and historical factors. However, the relative strength of macro-climatic factors in explaining trait-environment relationships at the local scale remains unclear. With the aim to achieve a better understanding, this first sDiv workshop assembled a unique group of vegetation-plot data holders and data analysts. Our main objective is to assess the relative importance of macroclimate in explaining trait variation in local plant communities worldwide. Specifically, the following questions shall be answered: (i) To which extent are relationships between traits preserved across environmental gradients worldwide, irrespective of macro climate? (ii) To which degree is the effect of local (abiotic and biotic) drivers mediated by climate? Such knowledge becomes highly relevant to devise local management measures to mitigate the negative effects of climate change, i.e. temperature increase or precipitation decrease. Implementation: In March 2013, 42 researchers comprising representatives of large plot and trait databases, specialists in plant community ecology, macroecology and global change ecology as well as experts in biodiversity informatics and advanced statistical methods gathered in Leipzig. During four intensive days, they discussed analytical approaches, defined requirements for data to be used in the analyses, planned the coming activities and last but not least coined sPlot's as acronym for the sDiv working group. 

The data was extracted via the Aekos data portal (aekos.org.au) on 11/11/2014. The entire content of the portal was extracted using the portal's species abundance file download feature to obtain the full extent of available data for the following datasets: Australian Ground Cover Reference Sites Database, Biological Survey of South Australia - Vegetation Survey - Biological Database of South Australia, Atlas of NSW database: VIS flora survey module, Queensland CORVEG Database, TERN AusPlots Rangelands, Transect for Environmental Monitoring and Decision Making (TREND), AusCover Supersites SLATS Star Transects, Biological Survey of the Ravensthorpe Range (Western Australia); (see attached file aekosDownload.zip). For surveys which record the presence of individual plants along gridded point intercept transects, two additional values (VegCoverSite and VegCoverSiteUnits) were added to each of these files by calculating an estimated vegetation cover value for each site using a slight modification of the scripts normally used to ingest the source data into AEKOS. Based on the individual cover observations for all points along transects, all points which do have some vegetation cover are totaled, divided by the total number of points and multiplied by 100 to obtain an estimated vegetation cover for the site in percent. Altitude values derived from a map layer using the site coordinates were obtained from the AEKOS index (see file solrDump.zip). The following layer was used to derive the altitude value for the AEKOS index: 3 second SRTM Derived Smoothed Digital Elevation Model (DEM-S) Version 1.0; data provided by Geoscience Australia. Finally, land use and broad vegetation type were derived from map layers using the site coordinates (see attached file landuseVegetationTypeIntersects.csv.zip). The following two layers were used for the intersect: Land use layer file - Symbology to display the catchment land use data in 18 land use classes according to the ALUM classification version 7; data provided by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture. Australia - Present Major Vegetation Groups - NVIS Version 4.1 (Albers 100m analysis product); data provided by the Australian Government Department of the Environment. These data were loaded into a PostgreSQL database. Subsequently, the data were centralised in two tables: table r_site containing the site specific data and table r_speciesobservations containing the individual data on observed specimen. A PostgreSQL backup file containing these two table was then built using the pg_dump tool (see attached file r_site_speciesobservations.sql.zip). All used PostgreSQL queries are available in the attached file sqlQueriesPostgres.sql. CSV versions of the two output tables were also produced (see attached file r_site_r_speciesobservations.csv.zip). The structure of the two output tables is described in the attached files r_siteMetadata.csv and r_speciesobservationsMetadata.csv.