RELIX: A Dataset of Vascular Plant Species Presence for 353 Prairie Remnants in the Midwestern United States, with Prairie Remnant Metadata

Abstract

Scientists have studied prairie remnants for decades to understand and conserve them. However, plant species data for these remnants are scattered across a variety of resources - often inaccessible without asking habitat managers. RELIX is a data set of nearly 37,000 vascular plant species records from 353 prairie remnants in eight states in the midwestern United States, overlapping with the core historical extent of the tallgrass prairie. Species lists were collated from a variety of recent (post-2020) and historical sources, including academic publications, managers' species lists, and floristic quality surveys. Remnant species lists are complemented with metadata for each remnant, including site location, environmental and ecological information, and characteristics about the data source. As a demonstration of the utility of data, and to advance knowledge about prairie remnants, we characterized prairie remnants using three common metrics: plant species richness, indicator species, and most frequent species. We found that well-sampled prairie remnants in RELIX typically had 100-250 species. The three most frequent species were the C4 grasses Andropogon gerardii, Schizachyrium scoparium, and Sorghastrum nutans, followed by the forbs Euphorbia corollata and Rudbeckia hirta. We identified indicator species for dry and wet prairies, and for those with sandy soils. Based on these data, we list 915 species that occurred in at least eight prairie remnants in the tallgrass prairie region. We invite researchers and managers to build on these data to advance research in prairie conservation and management. The data can be accessed at the Illinois Data Bank: https://doi.org/10.13012/B2IDB-5653911_V1.