Riparian vegetation abundance (percent cover) in the Elwha River estuary, Washington, in 2007 and 2014

This portion of the data release presents riparian plant species abundance (percent cover) data from plots sampled in the Elwha River estuary, Washington, in 2007 and 2014. In August 2007, we established 21 vegetation plots within the study area in a stratified random fashion, with three to five plots in five of the vegetation cover types denoted in the habitat classification maps: mixed riparian forest, willow-alder forest, riparian shrub, emergent marsh/marsh-shrub transition, and dunegrass. Each plot was 100 square meter, usually 10 m x 10 m, but in areas where the vegetation patch was narrow, plots were either 4 m x 25 m or 5 m x 20 m. We visually estimated percent cover by species of all vascular plants within one of ten cover classes: trace; 0-1 percent; 1-2 percent; 2-5 percent; 5-10 percent; 10-25 percent; 25-50 percent; 50-75 percent; 75-95 percent; 95-100 percent and used the midpoints of the classes for analysis. We resampled all plots in August 2014. Plant abundance data are provided in a comma-delimited spreadsheet (.csv).