Original Title	Ground beetles, vegetation and landscape data from the semi-open corridor project
Handle	20.500.14123/1612
Kinds of Data	Observation Data
Resource Type	Dataset
Creator	Boutaud, Estève  0000-0001-9997-2165 (Institut für Ökologie (IE), Leuphana Universität Lüneburg  02w2y2t16)
Description of the Dataset	The study was conducted in two landscapes in Germany, the Lüneburger Heide and the Schwäbische Alb. In each landscape, the research group selected eight sites (> 2 km apart), of which they surveyed half of them in 2013 - 2014 and the other half in 2014 - 2015. Each site comprised patches of the three habitat types - open, semi-open, and forest habitats - in direct vicinity. In each of the three habitats within a site, a row of five pitfall traps with 10 m between traps was used. A total of 120 traps were used in each landscape (8 sites x 3 habitats x 5 traps). In the Heide, traps were serviced year-round from January 2013 to February 2014 and from March 2014 to January 2015 every three weeks (except for extended trapping periods caused by snow cover in winter). In the Alb, traps were serviced every three weeks from April to September in 2013 and 2014. This resulted in 18 collection events per site in the Heide in 2013–2014 (1080 traps collected in total), 15 in 2014–2015 (900 traps), and, in the Alb, eight collection events in both years (960 traps). As pitfall traps, the researchers used transparent plastic cups (500 ml, 10 cm diameter) filled with 150 ml of Renner solution (Renner, 1982) set flush with the ground. An acrylic glass roof was added in the Alb, 3–4 cm above the trap to reduce disturbance by sheep. Vegetation variables were recorded by visually estimating the aerial covers (sensu Fehmi 2010) of eight parameters in a 1 m radius around each pitfall trap. The following ground covers were considered: cover of grass, herbaceous, heather, bilberry, moss, bare soil, plant litter, and deadwood. For the plant cover, the research group considered all plants with similar structures together and thus estimated the cover of all species of grasses, mosses, and non-woody herbaceous together. For the woody vegetation, dwarf shrubs were split into two groups between heather (Calluna vulgaris) and bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus). The estimated covers were described to the nearest 5%. In addition, tree canopy cover was similarly estimated as the percentage of tree crowns directly above each pitfall trap. Using a measuring tape, the distance to the closest tree was measured and rounded to the nearest centimeter. The surveys were conducted once for each region, in July 2014 for the Alb and in September 2014 for the Heide. To take into account the potential influence of the surrounding landscape, the researchers measured the distances to the open or forest habitat edges as the distance between a given trap and the limit of the tree crowns at the forest or semi-open habitat edges using the measuring tool in Google Earth Pro (version 7.3.4.8248). They also measured the proportion of the main habitat types in the surrounding landscape in a 250 m buffer around each pitfall trap line as well as the size of the semi-open areas; however, those variables were strongly correlated with either of the distances to the habitat edges and, as such, were not used for the analyses.
Methods	Observation (Field) Other Further information: Insektenfallen
Keywords	Laufkäfer; Käfer; Insekten; Vorkommen; Lebensraum; Insektenmonitoring; Biodiversität; Insektenrückgang; Lüneburger Heide; Schwäbische Alb; Carabids; Ground Beetles; Insects; Abundance; Habitat; Insect Monitoring; Biodiversity; Insect Decline; Lüneburg Heath; Swabian Alb
Thematic Classification	Biodiversität
Geolocation	Country: Germany Region/Location: Lüneburger Heide; Schwäbische Alb
Temporal Coverage of the Dataset	2013-01 - 2015-01
Notes	A detailed description of the variables can be found in the uploaded README file. Coordinates of the pitfall traps are provided as part of the dataset.
Published by	Medien- und Informationszentrum, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Superordinate Data Collection	× Superordinate Data Collection Close Data PhD Boutaud
Related Resources	× Relations of the dataset Close Relations of the dataset