https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0zpc86741

The dataset contains three tables related to the fieldwork sampling of the richness, cover, and community composition of insect-pollinated vascular plants during the mean flowering phenophase of insect-pollinated plants in the European boreal zone (July and August) . The acronym of the whole project is "CarPLANT" as it aims to reveal the effects of traffic pollution on plant and pollinator biodiversity in urban environments.

Description of the data and file structure

The first table of the current dataset is entitled "CarPLANT_sampling points_locations_habitats".
The dataset contains 16 columns with certain titles. Below, the column titles are explained in detail.

1. Quadrat id ‒ this column reports information on the individual codes of the studied quadrats. Each code contains the component revealing information on the city T (Turku), H (Helsinki), and Ta (Tampere), on the habitat type R (road verge), I (traffic island), and P (parking lot), then on the treatment where letter c indicates control. First number in a code indicates the location site, while second number – the individual quadrat id. There are usually five quadrats per location except two study locations in the dataset.
2. City – there are three cities in the study which are Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku.
3. Control – yes or no refers to the suburban location (yes) and urban location (no).
4. Location id – refers to the code of a location and contains information on the city T (Turku), H (Helsinki), and Ta (Tampere), on the habitat type R (road verge), I (traffic island), and P (parking lot), then, on the treatment where letter c indicates control. Finally, each location has and individual number.
5. Location coordinates – GPS coordinates for each location presented as Latitude (N) and Longitude (E).
6. Location street no – presented as a street title and number of a given location.
7. Habitat type – type of a studied traffic-related habitat: traffic island, parking lot (place), road verge.
8. Habitat code – letter codes for the habitat types: R (road verge), I (traffic island), and P (parking lot).
9. Distance_to_road (m) – actual nearest distance to the road from each studied quadrat measured in meters during the field sampling.
10. Traffic volume (ADT) – traffic volume estimated as yearly averages of daily traffic (ADT) volumes and it measured as vehicles/day. Data has been obtained from the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency. The traffic volume map provides the yearly average of daily traffic on the main roads in Finland in 2021.
11. Total plant_cover (%) – total estimated vegetation cover per quadrat.
12. Flowering plant_cover (%) – total estimated cover of insect-pollinated vascular plant species per quadrat flowering at the moment of the survey.
13. Total plant_n_species – total number of plant species identified for the particular quadrat.
14. Total flowering plant_n_species – total number of insect-pollinated vascular plant species per quadrat flowering at the moment of the survey.
15. Plastic pieces n – total number of the pieces of garbage irrespective of size (food boxes and packages, plastic fibers, cigarette filters and the others) per quadrat.
16. LN plastic – log transformed-values for plastic pieces (LN+1)

The second table "***CarPLANT_biodiversity data*" represents the relative abundances of the plant species per quadrat, where the cover (%) is represented in decimal numbers).

The third table "CarPLANT_floral community data" the data are presented as average cover (%) estimated from the number of studied quadrats per location for each particular plant species.

The variables are mostly the same as in the first table. A new variable "pollinators" indicate the total number (abundance) of pollinating insects collected from a given location during approximately 20 min time period with a sweep-net collection method.

All three tables make up the dataset essential for the project.

Sharing/Access information

Current dataset is shared under CC0 license waiver used by Dryad.