This repository downloads, cleans, and analyzes National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) lidar and plot level plant cover data to look at the relationship between forest structural diversity and resistance to plant invasion across 26 NEON forested sites.
a. Downloads all plant cover data and plot specific data for all date-site combinations using NEON API. The files are in compressed .rar format. We selected only forest NEON sites for further processing in this study.
a. Runs above files using all date site combinations to make a combined dataset. The resultant is a csv file that contains all plot level information including vegetation, topography, soil, and coordinates of plot centers. We use helper.R for coordinate conversion to match with the reference systems of other support files.
b. Runs above files using all date site combinations to make a combined dataset. The resultant is a csv file that contains all plot level information including vegetation, topography, soil, and coordinates of plot centers. We use helper.R for coordinate conversion to match with the reference systems of other support files.
Downloads lidar data from NEON from NEON for all site–date combinations identified in Step 1. To minimize boundary effects, each point cloud was clipped to a 200 m × 200 m area (surrounding a 20 m × 20 m plot). This produced one LiDAR point cloud (in .laz format) for each plot within each site–date combination. Due to size constraints (~2.63 GB in total), the files are not included in this repository.
Extracts a series of structural divesity metrics using pointcloud and point cloud derived canopy height meodels for each plot based on LaRue et al., 2019. Description of structural diversity metrics derived and references can be found here
Analyses the effects of structural diversity and site-specific conditions on forest invasion, using invasion metrics derived from plot-level plant cover data and lidar derived structural diversity metrics. The results demonstrate that forest structural diversity can serve as a useful indicator of invasion potential across 26 NEON forest sites distributed throughout the conterminous United States.