Plant Cover On Niwot Ridge
The Niwot Ridge LTER has monitored vegetation in 88 1m X 1m plots in an alpine dry meadow since 1989. Explore our data, visualized below, to discover how plant community composition is changing over time on the Saddle of Niwot Ridge.
Plant Cover By Year and Vegetation Type
The figure below shows annual percent cover for each of five vegetation types— forbs, graminoids, shrubs, mosses, lichens— in an alpine dry meadow on Niwot Ridge.
Plant Cover Anomalies By Year and Vegetation Type
The figure below shows annual deviation in percent cover from the long-term mean for each of five types— forbs, graminoids, shrubs, moss, and lichen— in an alpine dry meadow. Positive values indicate more cover than average while negative values indicate less cover than average.
Download Plant Cover Data and Code
The long-term data and code used to make the figures on this page are publicly available on GitHub and the Environmental Data Initiative Portal.
*Figures, content, and data on this page may be used with proper citation.
about Plant Cover Data from Niwot Ridge
Field Site
The plant cover data visualized on this page is collected in an alpine dry meadow on the Saddle of Niwot Ridge (Figs. 1 and 2).
Figure 1: Climate stations of the Niwot Ridge LTER. Blue stars indicate the location of the subalpine (C1), Saddle, and alpine (D1) climate stations.
Figure 2: The Saddle on Niwot Ridge. The Niwot Ridge saddle is located 5.6 km from the Continental Divide. The area is located along a ridge-top, but in a shallow saddle between the east and west knolls. There is a 10,000 sq ft tundra laboratory on the south side of the saddle, which serves as a staging area for research in all weather conditions
Instrumentation and Data Collection:
Permanent 1 m^2 vegetation plots were established near each of the 88 Saddle grid stakes in 1989 by Marilyn Walker, who led the sampling effort until 1997. To estimate plant canopy cover, point quadrat measurements have been made at irregular intervals from 1989 to the present (1989, 1990, 1995, 1997, 2006, 2008 and yearly from 2010 onward). The point-quadrat technique used for sampling was described in Spasojevic et al. (2013) and Auerbach (1992).
Auerbach, N. 1992. Effects of road and dust disturbance in minerotrophic and acidic tundra ecosystems, northern Alaska. University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Spasojevic, Marko J, William D Bowman, Hope C Humphries, Timothy R Seastedt, and Katharine N Suding. Changes in alpine vegetation over 21 years: Are patterns across a heterogeneous landscape consistent with predictions?” Ecosphere 4, no. 9 (2013): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1890/es13-00133.1.
How To Cite Data and Figures On this page
The Niwot Ridge LTER welcomes use of the figures and content on this page when accompanied by the following citation:
Niwot Ridge LTER. 2026. Data Dashboard. Retrieved from https://nwt.lternet.edu/plant-cover.
We also welcome your use of the data linked to on this page when accompanied by the following citations:
Walker, M., H. Humphries, and Niwot Ridge LTER. 2026. Plant species composition data for Saddle grid, 1989 - ongoing. ver 11. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/9f12b06bbaf0b2e2ebb129afab46f4f4.
Smith, J., H. Humphries, M. Walker, and Niwot Ridge LTER. 2026. Plant species list for Niwot Ridge and Green Lakes Valley, 1970 - ongoing. ver 4. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/7ed5721a69470613fb6379b59469d73d.
These Niwot Ridge data packages are hosted on the Environmental Data Initiative Data Portal. Each data package includes detailed information about where and how our plant data are recorded and processed.
Contact Us
If you have questions about the data presented on this page, please email the Niwot Ridge LTER. To learn more about research, education, and outreach conducted by the Niwot Ridge LTER, please visit our website.