@article{fdi:010082189,
  title = {s{P}lot{O}pen : an environmentally balanced, open-access, global dataset of vegetation plots [{D}ata {P}aper]},
  author = {{S}abatini, {F}.{M}. and {L}enoir, {J}. and {H}attab, {T}. and {A}rnst, {E}.{A}. and {C}hytrý, {M}. and {D}engler, {J}. and {D}e {R}uffray, {P}. and {H}ennekens, {S}.{M}. and {J}andt, {U}. and {J}ansen, {F}. and {J}im{\'e}nez-{A}lfaro, {B}. and {K}attge, {J}. and {L}evesley, {A}. and {P}illar, {V}.{D}. and {P}urschke, {O}. and {S}andel, {B}. and {S}ultana, {F}. and {M}unzinger, {J}{\'e}r{\^o}me and et al.},
  editor = {},
  language = {{ENG}},
  abstract = {{M}otivation {A}ssessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. {V}egetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co-occurring within delimited local areas. {T}his allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. {A}lthough many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. {A} recent initiative, called 's{P}lot', compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. {T}he s{P}lot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open-access. {H}ere, we address both these issues by (a) resampling the vegetation plots using several environmental variables as sampling strata and (b) securing permission from data holders of 105 local-to-regional datasets to openly release data. {W}e thus present s{P}lot{O}pen, the largest open-access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. s{P}lot{O}pen can be used to explore global diversity at the plant community level, as ground truth data in remote sensing applications, or as a baseline for biodiversity monitoring. {M}ain types of variable contained {V}egetation plots (n = 95,104) recording cover or abundance of naturally co-occurring vascular plant species within delimited areas. s{P}lot{O}pen contains three partially overlapping resampled datasets (c. 50,000 plots each), to be used as replicates in global analyses. {B}esides geographical location, date, plot size, biome, elevation, slope, aspect, vegetation type, naturalness, coverage of various vegetation layers, and source dataset, plot-level data also include community-weighted means and variances of 18 plant functional traits from the {TRY} {P}lant {T}rait {D}atabase. {S}patial location and grain {G}lobal, 0.01-40,000 m(2). {T}ime period and grain 1888-2015, recording dates. {M}ajor taxa and level of measurement 42,677 vascular plant taxa, plot-level records. {S}oftware format {T}hree main matrices (.csv), relationally linked.},
  keywords = {big data ; biodiversity ; biogeography ; database ; functional traits ; macroecology ; vascular plants ; vegetation plots ; {MONDE}},
  booktitle = {},
  journal = {{G}lobal {E}cology and {B}iogeography},
  volume = {30},
  numero = {9},
  pages = {1740--1764},
  ISSN = {1466-822{X}},
  year = {2021},
  DOI = {10.1111/geb.13346},
  URL = {https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010082189},
}