Characterization of grassland and shrubland patches on post-mining Mediterranean slopes and the adjacent forest: soil, vegetation, and topography data
Data paper
Key message
The described database provides environmental information about a case study of post-mining slopes in northern Spain. It characterizes soil physicochemical properties (including first mineral horizon thickness), plant community attributes (diversity indexes and cover by species, by family, by Raunkiær’s life-form and by life cycle) and the topography (slope steepness and altitude) of two vegetation patches—grassland and shrubland—on the same mine slope restored 11 years ago, and the close native forest.
Keywords
Grassland; Shrubland; Forest; Physicochemical soil parameters; Plant cover
Publication
López-Marcos, D., Turrión, MB. & Martínez-Ruiz, C. Characterization of grassland and shrubland patches on post-mining Mediterranean slopes and the adjacent forest: soil, vegetation, and topography data. Annals of Forest Science 83, 16 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-026-01334-w
Data availability
The dataset (López-Marcos et al. 2025) is available at Zenodo digital repository: (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17523269) and associated metadata is available at: https://metadata-afs.nancy.inra.fr/geonetwork/srv/fre/catalog.search#/metadata/ec2be8d2-dbb2-4d7b-a8f3-7aabe30e6517. The dataset consists of a single CSV file, Dataset.csv. The file contains 42 columns (sampling plots) and 163 rows (environmental variables). The first four rows are metadata: Plot (plot ID), Patch (patch community: G = grassland; S = shrubland; F = forest), Transect (1–3), and Position (slope position: 1 = top, …, 6 = bottom). The remaining 159 rows correspond to the measured environmental variables. Plot characteristics include information about topography, physicochemical soil parameters, and plant cover features.
Handling editor
Erwin Dreyer