Ecosystem engineers in the extreme: The modest impact of marmots on vegetation cover and plant nitrogen and phosphorus content in a cold, extremely arid mountain environment

Raw data for the article from Chibowski P., Zegarek M., Zarzycka A., Suska-Malawska M. 2023. "Ecosystem engineers in the extreme: The modest impact of marmots on vegetation cover and plant nitrogen and phosphorus content in a cold, extremely arid mountain environment", Ecology and Evolution

Description of sheets:

Burrows: A list of all burrows which were found during fieldwork and are presented on Fig. 1. Columns X and Y are coordinates in the coordinate system EPSG: 3857 WGS 84/Pseudo-Mercator. Column “ID-chemical analysis” indicates burrows where plant samples were collected and gives numbers which were used in the article. Column “ID-cover analysis” indicates the numbers of burrows for plant cover analysis. Those numbers are not referenced in the article, but are shown in the “Cover analysis” sheet as the closest burrow to a given point. Basic spatial analysis results are given for each burrow: the plant cover in a 20 m buffer and the area of the burrow mound.

Cover analysis: Results of the cover analysis done in QGis software. Each point is a hexagon with a short diagonal of 25 cm, corresponding to an area of 0.054 m2. The number of the closest burrow (see sheet “Burrows”) and the distance from this burrow is given. Each point is categorized as soil, plant or mound. X and Y are coordinates in the coordinate system EPSG: 3857 WGS 84/Pseudo-Mercator. 

Chemical analysis: Results for each sample (plant or marmot faeces). TN – total nitrogen (%), TC – total carbon (%), TP – total phosphorus (%), d15N – δ15N (‰), d13C – δ13C (‰)