Long-term afforestation experiment at the Alpine treeline site Stillberg, Switzerland

The afforestation site is located on a northeast-facing slope with steep, topographically highly structured terrain and covers elevations from 2075 to 2230 m a.s.l. The afforestation site was divided into 4052 square plots of 3.5 × 3.5 m, arranged in a regular species-alternating pattern over the whole area. Each plot contained 25 trees of one species (1350 plots per species), and the seedlings were systematically planted 70 cm apart.

The trees have been monitored since 1975. Specifically, tree mortality was assessed annually from 1975 until 1995 and has been documented every ten years since then, with surveys in 2005 and 2015 (the next survey is due in 2025). Height of the surviving trees was measured in 1975, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2005, and 2015.

In 1995, 2005, and 2015, drivers of tree vitality were assessed for a subset of trees per plot. Additionally, an extensive set of environmental parameters characterizing microsite conditions of the afforestation area were recorded before and after the planting of the trees. #

Data description

The five datasets from the afforestation experiment comprise ecological and environmental data from the main afforestation experiment in five datasets with accompanying metadata (Stillberg_afforestation_all_metadata.xlsx). All data and metadata files are bundled in a ZIP-file (Stillberg_afforestation_v1.zip). In particular, a first dataset contains environmental data characterising microsite conditions of the 4000 plots with regard to soil, topography, vegetation and microclimatic conditions (Stillberg_afforestation_plot_data_v1.csv; Stillberg_afforestation_plot_metadata_v1.csv.

In each plot, the natural tree regeneration was assessed by counting seedings of several tree species in 2005 and 2015 (Stillberg_afforestation_regeneration_data_v1.csv; Stillberg_afforestation_regeneration_metadata_v1.csv). Furthermore, specific information about each of the 92’000 planted trees of the tree species is available (Stillberg_afforestation_tree_parameter_data_v1.csv; Stillberg_afforestation_tree_parameter_metadata_v1.csv).

Survival data for each of the 92’000 individual trees can be found in a separate dataset (Stillberg_afforestation_tree_survival_data_v1.csv; Stillberg_afforestation_tree_survival_metadata_v1.csv). Tree growth and vitality parameters are available for all trees from 1995, and for subsets of trees for 2005 and 2015 (Stillberg_afforestation_tree_measurements_data_v1.csv; Stillberg_afforestation_tree_measurements_metadata_v1.csv).