Top down vs bottom up control on understory plant community structure in the northern Boreal Forest

For the first decade of a factorial experiment, fertilizer was added to half the plots, and snowshoe hare herbivory was excluded. After 10 years, each plot was permanently divided in half where treatment was stopped, so researchers could measure recovery of the communities.

The data consists of species richness and percent cover data for nearly 80 species of understory plants at two sites, each with 16 plots.