Table 3.

Data dictionary for the plant community data from Mt. Gongga (dataset i).

Variable name	Variable type	Variable range or levels	How measured	Units/formats/treatment level coding
originSiteID	factor	[site]	defined	High alpine (H), Alpine (A), Middle (M), Lowland (L)
originBlockID	factor	[site] × [block]	defined	A1 – L7
turfID (same as originPlotID)	factor	[site] × [block] × [treatment]	defined	A1-C – L7-OTC
destBlockID	factor	[site] × [block]	defined	A1 – L7
destSiteID	factor	[site]	defined	High alpine (H), Alpine (A), Middle (M), Lowland (L)
TTtreat	factor	[treatment code]	defined	control, local control (local), warming (warm1), extremeWarming (warm3), cooling (cool1), extremeCooling (cool3), OTC (OTC)
year	date	2012–2016		AC
Species	factor	Short latin species name	Identified	3 digit genus and 3 digit species
cover	numeric	0.01–98	Visually estimated	%
flag	text	Cover corrections and imputations		Comments on cover corrections and imputations
speciesName	text	latin species name	identified	full species name

Data dictionary with column descriptions for dataset i – the plant community composition data file from 140 control and climate change experimental plots at four sites along the 1100 m elevational gradient in Mt. Gongga, China.