including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request.

Lysenko 91,92 | Armin Macanović 93 | Parastoo Mahdavi 94 | Peter Manning 35 | Corrado Marcenò 13 | Vassiliy Martynenko 95 | Maurizio Mencuccini 96 | Vanessa Minden 97 | Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund 54 | Marco Moretti 98 | Jonas V. Müller 99 | Abstract Aims: Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level.Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community-weighted means and variances of traits using gap-filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community-weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale. K E Y W O R D S biodiversity, community ecology, ecoinformatics, functional diversity, global scale, macroecology, phylogenetic diversity, plot database, sPlot, taxonomic diversity, vascular plant, vegetation relevé 166 |

Determination of long-term tropical cyclone (TC) variability is of enormous importance to society; however, changes in TC activity are poorly understood owing to discrepancies among various datasets and limited span of instrumental records. While the increasing intensity and frequency of TCs have been previously documented on a long-term scale using various proxy records, determination of their poleward migration has been based mostly on short-term instrumental data. Here we present a unique tree-ring–based approach for determination of long-term variability in TC activity via forest disturbance rates in northeast Asia (33–45°N). Our results indicate significant long-term changes in TC activity, with increased rates of disturbances in the northern latitudes over the past century. The disturbance frequency was stable over time in the southern latitudes, however. Our findings of increasing disturbance frequency in the areas formerly situated at the edge of TC activity provide evidence supporting the broad relevance of poleward migration of TCs. Our results significantly enhance our understanding of the effects of climate change on TCs and emphasize the need for determination of long-term variation of past TC activity to improve future TC projections.

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Questions To what extent do changes in management (abandonment and fertilization) affect plant functional and taxonomic diversity in wet meadow communities? To what extent do the changes in functional and taxonomic diversity depend on site productivity? Location Železné hory Mts., Czech Republic. Methods Experimental plots were established on 21 wet meadows differing in productivity and species composition. In each meadow, in 2007, four 1 × 1 m plots were established, representing a full factorial design with abandonment and fertilization as the factors. In each plot, the number of species present was recorded in 100 subplots (0.1 × 0.1 m) in the years 2007, 2009 and 2011. Different indicators of functional diversity (functional richness, functional evenness, and Rao′s quadratic entropy) were calculated using five functional traits (SLA, LDMC, seed mass, plant height and clonality). Both abundance‐weighted and non‐weighted diversity indices were calculated. Randomization tests (conducted with PERMANOVA) were used to assess the effect of site productivity and management on both α‐ and β‐diversity components. Results Meadows along the productivity gradient differed in functional and taxonomic diversity. Both abandonment and fertilization decreased taxonomic diversity. Whereas fertilization decreased functional richness and Rao′s quadratic entropy, abandonment decreased functional evenness. The changes in both taxonomic and functional diversity caused by abandonment and fertilization occurred faster in more productive meadows. Conclusions The increased dominance of tall species with abandonment and fertilization, followed by the loss of species and the decrease in various indicators of functional diversity, suggest that increased competition for light resulted in increased trait convergence among co‐existing species. In addition, many processes occurring after abandonment and fertilization depend on meadow productivity. Results suggest that abundance‐ and non‐abundance‐weighted diversity indices give complementary insights on community structure. These results imply that changes are needed in current meadow management and conservation.

Motivation Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co‐occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. Although many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. A recent initiative, called ‘sPlot’, compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. The sPlot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open‐access. Here, 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. We thus present sPlotOpen, the largest open‐access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. sPlotOpen 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. Main types of variable contained Vegetation plots (n = 95,104) recording cover or abundance of naturally co‐occurring vascular plant species within delimited areas. sPlotOpen contains three partially overlapping resampled datasets (c. 50,000 plots each), to be used as replicates in global analyses. Besides 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 Plant Trait Database. Spatial location and grain Global, 0.01–40,000 m². Time period and grain 1888–2015, recording dates. Major taxa and level of measurement 42,677 vascular plant taxa, plot‐level records. Software format Three main matrices (.csv), relationally linked.

The globally observed trend of changing intensity of tropical cyclones over the past few decades emphasizes the need for a better understanding of the effects of such disturbance events in natural and inhabited areas. On the Korean Peninsula, typhoon intensity has increased over the past 100 years as evidenced by instrumental data recorded from 1904 until present. We examined how the increase in three weather characteristics (maximum hourly and daily precipitation, and maximum wind speed) during the typhoon activity affected old-growth oak forests. Quercus mongolica is a dominant species in the Korean mountains and the growth releases from 220 individuals from three sites along a latitudinal gradient (33-38°N) of decreasing typhoon activity were studied. Growth releases indicate tree-stand disturbance and improved light conditions for surviving trees. The trends in release events corresponded to spatiotemporal gradients in maximum wind speed and precipitation. A high positive correlation was found between the maximum values of typhoon characteristics and the proportion of trees showing release. A higher proportion of disturbed trees was found in the middle and southern parts of the Korean peninsula where typhoons are most intense. This shows that the releases are associated with typhoons and also indicates the differential impact of typhoons on the forests. Finally, we present a record of the changing proportion of trees showing release based on tree-rings for the period 1770-1979. The reconstruction revealed no trend during the period 1770-1879, while the rate of forest disturbances increased rapidly from 1880 to 1979. Our results suggest that if typhoon intensity rises, as is projected by some climatic models, the number of forest disturbance events will increase thus altering the disturbance regime and ecosystem processes.

Aim: To describe the main vegetation types of the Korean zonal forests and explore their relationship with the main environmental and geographic gradients.Location: Korean Peninsula.Methods: A data set of 3847 relev es of zonal (semi)natural forest stands, together with environmental factors recorded in the field or derived from interpolated climatic data was collected. Using the hierarchical ISOPAM method, the relev es were classified into main forest types and their species composition, diversity and distribution were described. Their differentiation along main environmental gradients was analysed with classification and regression trees.Results: Eleven vegetation types of forests were distinguished and assigned to five vegetation classes: Quercetea mongolicae (representing the core of the Korean temperate forests), Vaccinio-Piceetea (subalpine coniferous forest), Fagetea crenatae (rare beech-dominated forest included within a sub-montane and sub-oceanic type of oak-dominated forest), Querco mongolicae-Betuletea davuricae (sub-continental drought-and fire-tolerant forest, differentiated along elevational gradient) and Camellietea japonicae (oceanic evergreen forest). At a higher hierarchical level, these 11 vegetation types were grouped into three clusters, which most probably reflect different vegetation development in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Within the three major vegetation clusters, each forest type occupies a distinct environment. The forest types are especially well separated along elevational and temperature gradients. The distribution of individual forest types is joinly driven by total amount of incoming energy and thermal extremes, both affecting water supply to plant communities.Conclusions: All distinguished vegetation types can be assigned to the recent syntaxonomic classification system. However, three main vegetation clusters do not correspond to traditionally distinguished syntaxonomic units. Nevertheless, the forest types within these clusters share common species with similar ecology and, especially, migration histories during the late glacial and post-glacial periods. Therefore, we interpret these clusters as biogeographic patterns reflecting vegetation history rather than the current environmental conditions. Š rů tek, M. (miroslav@srutek.cz), Altman, J.