Occurrence and environmental data for aquatic plants of Minnesota from 1999–2018

Abstract The aquatic flora of Minnesota’s freshwater lakes have been extensively surveyed for purposes of resource assessment, research, and ecosystem management. Despite widespread use of a common method for vegetation sampling (“point-intercept surveys”), these records have existed to-date in disparate locations without unification. Here we present a first-of-its-kind dataset of point-level occurrences, relative abundances, and associated environmental data for macrophytes (freshwater plants) across Minnesota. The data encompass 3,194 surveys of 1,520 lakes and ponds performed over a 19-year timespan. A total of 367,382 points were sampled, across which 231 taxa were recorded. Macrophyte occurrence data and depth, as well as point-level relative-plant-abundance measures for a subset of surveys, were collated, cleaned, and joined to geospatial data and Secchi-depth measurements of water clarity, enabling light availability, a primary control on aquatic plant growth, to be estimated. The data are well-suited for ecological analyses across multiple spatial scales and can be used to address both fundamental and applied ecological questions.