Abstract
Resurveys of historical vegetation plots are invaluable to document patterns of change in community composition and diversity. They are also useful to better understand impacts of multiple and interacting global-change drivers. The relevance of resurveys is particularly high for communities exhibiting slow dynamics, such as herb layers in temperate forests. Furthermore, herb layers in temperate forests typically comprise a large fraction of the vascular plant diversity and are known to be strongly affected by various global-change drivers, including past land use, increased atmospheric deposition and changing management. forestREplot is a database of forest herb layer resurvey plots, spread across the temperate zones of the globe. The database is used to quantify changes in herb layer composition and forest functioning, and to assess the effects of global environmental changes such as nitrogen deposition and climate change. The total number of plots in the database is now 5,524 plots representing not less than 14,185 relevees. The just released forestREplot 3.0 (January 2024) is now based on the World Flora Online (WFO) as new taxonomic standard. We have now 79 data sets with 1 resurvey, 9 with 2 resurveys, 2 with 3 resurveys, 3 with 4 resurveys, and 2 with 5 resurveys.
