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Alpine Vegetation Trends in Glacier National Park, Montana 2003-2018

Metadata Updated: November 26, 2025

This dataset is focused on alpine plant species presence/absence, species turnover, and trends in species abundance on four mountain summits in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA from 2003 through 2014. Two summit sites were established in 2003 on Dancing Lady and Bison Mountain, east of the continental divide. Two additional summit sites were established in 2004 on Pitamakin and Mt. Seward, also east of the continental divide. This multi-summit approach to monitoring alpine plant species follows the protocols of the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) that were initiated by the University of Vienna in 2000 and which have been refined and revised since then. GLORIA summit sites now exist throughout the world. Current protocols are available at: https://gloria.ac.at/downloads/manual. Plant surveys took place every five years during peak alpine plant growing season in late July and August on all aspects of the summits using a combination of area surveys and meter plots. Temperature loggers were buried on each aspect and replaced every 3-5 years. To better track interannual variability, another band of plots was established below the summit plots in 2010 for Dancing Lady and 2011 to Pitamakin. These were surveyed every year until 2014. A total of 189 species were recorded for the four summit sites. Preliminary results indicated species turnover rates of 0-36% at the five year intervals, and 6-55% at the ten year interval. Annual turnover rates for the lower bands on Dancing Lady and Pitamakin were 2-18%. The NE aspects were most species rich and S aspects had the greatest turnover rates. Little difference was evident as a function of elevation. Additional surveys are planned for the summer of 2019.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 26, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 26, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5d013a62e4b05cc71cad260f
Data Last Modified 2020-08-26T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 3b38fe87-bcf5-46d3-9f39-48f6e2e30fed
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 17946707c79733eb04115b91208c289820c988c32e5560ea32fc7360b257665a
Source Schema Version 1.1

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