Copass_Council_Cover.xls Authors: Catharine Copass F.S. Chapin III A.D. McGuire D.A. Walker Grant: OPP-9732126 Overview: Peak season understory cover and heights (cm) from the ATLAS sites in Council (C1-Forest, C2-Tundra, C3-Tall Shrub, C4- Woodland, C5- Barren or Heath, C6- Low Shrub). Instrument: One graduate student and an army of high school and undergraduate students. Point frame and pin, ruler. Data Collection: We sampled vegetation in the 100x100m sites that were centered on the eddy covariance tower. Sites C2, C6 and C4 were point framed in 1999, and C1, C3, C5 were done in 2000. We randomly selected plots at the sites. Vegetation was point framed for cover and biomass was harvested (see companion spreadsheet Copass_Council_Biomass.xls). The point frame was 20x50 cm and consisted of 55 points. At each point, the top hit of each new species was recorded. The height was recorded where the plant part bisected the pin. The ground surface type was also recorded. Data Format: Data is in an excel workbook, with one worksheet per site. The first column contains the plant functional type PFT (Betula, Salix, Decid (deciduous), Egreen (evergreen), Forb, Grass, Lichen, Moss, Sedge). The second column is the six letter species code. Following the categorical columns are the individual plots for each site. Each plot has four associated columns. The first column is the number of hits (Num hits- maximum of 55 per species). The second column is average height, the std deviation for the heights and the number of samples used to determine the heights. Following the columns, I have calculated total, average and standard error of the average for the sites. I have also calculated totals for each of the PFTs. Data Remarks: This data is basically in raw format. I have checked it as carefully as possible, however I anticipate that are still some errors. Please contact me if you find them or have helpful suggestions. References: See any data sets by Beringer for climate and flux data from these sites, or additional Copass data sets for Biomass, LAI and thaw measurements.