Fine scale understory vegetation structure dataset of Wytham Woods, UK, 2023
https://doi.org/10.5285/371f7553-42db-4da0-a062-76b5526ecaa7
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This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence
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This dataset contains vegetation and canopy cover data from 780 locations across Wytham Woods (Oxfordshire). It has information on up to the four most common herbaceous plant species (42 sp. identified in total) present at 17 points per location, and canopy cover data at 9 points per location. The sampled area at each location is about 0.12 ha (circle of 20 m radius). Sampling took place in June and July 2023 by two fieldworkers. To control for the potential bias introduced by each of the measurers a subset of locations were repeated to compute the intra- and inter-observer repeatabilities being in both high for the canopy cover and species composition.
This dataset results from the NERC project "Understanding Within- and Between-Population Variation in Responses to Climate Variability and Extreme Climatic Events" (Grant NE/X000184/1). The overarching aim of the project was to study the effects of intra- and inter-annual temperature variability, in relation to vegetation structure, on great tit (Parus major) fitness.
This dataset results from the NERC project "Understanding Within- and Between-Population Variation in Responses to Climate Variability and Extreme Climatic Events" (Grant NE/X000184/1). The overarching aim of the project was to study the effects of intra- and inter-annual temperature variability, in relation to vegetation structure, on great tit (Parus major) fitness.
Publication date: 2026-07-28
Format
Comma-separated values (CSV)
Spatial information
Study area
Spatial representation type
Tabular (text)
Spatial reference system
WGS 84
Temporal information
Temporal extent
2023-06-09 to 2023-07-21
Provenance & quality
Habitat data was sampled at the nest-box level (nest-box placed for birds to breed) and 780 boxes were sampled. Sampling consisted of 17 points in a circular grid arounds each nest box. The first point was located below a tree with a nest box available for the birds to breed, and the other 16 in two sets of 8 points surrounding the nest at 10 and 20 meters distance. The boxes for the birds cover the whole extension of Wytham as does our sampling. Sampling was conducted during the summer of 2023. Canopy cover was determined using a transparent grid with 100 squares and counting in which the sky could be seen. No other specific materials were used. The process of data cleaning and preparing the dataset consisted on removing duplicate locations (used for the repeatability) and standardising the names of the described plant species.
Licensing and constraints
This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence 
Cite this dataset as:
López-Idiáquez, D.; Sheldon, B.C. (2026). Fine scale understory vegetation structure dataset of Wytham Woods, UK, 2023. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/371f7553-42db-4da0-a062-76b5526ecaa7
Related
Correspondence/contact details
Other contacts
Publisher
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
info@eidc.ac.uk
Rights holder
University of Oxford
Custodian
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
info@eidc.ac.uk