Work

A field-measured dataset of plant and soil characteristics spanning six grassland types in the Zoige, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, China

Year: 2026

Type: data-paper

Abstract: Grasslands, which cover nearly one-quarter of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, perform vital functions in carbon sequestration, biodiversity maintenance, and ecosystem stability. Zoige, situated on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, hosts one of the world’s largest alpine peatland grassland complexes; however, quantitative field-based ecological datasets remain limited, constraining biomass evaluation, productivity estimation, and large-scale carbon assessment. To improve the availability of ecological data and enhance the accuracy of grassland resource characterization, this study provides a field-measured dataset from 80 sampling plots across six grassland types in Zoige between 2020 and 2022, capturing variations in community structure, soil nutrient status, dominant species composition, and biomass allocation patterns. The dataset includes geographic coordinates, sampling dates, species inventories, species records, vegetation richness and coverage, aboveground and belowground biomass, and soil attributes including moisture, bulk density, organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus. The results indicate that the number of species in each grassland plot in Zoige from ranged from 16 to 44. The aboveground biomass ranged from 464.70 ± 286.52 g/m 2 , the belowground biomass ranged from 2,517.57 ± 1,239.84 g/m 2 , and the total biomass ranged from 2,982.26 ± 1,409.94 g/m 2 . Significant correlations were observed among the biomass variables, with belowground biomass accounting for approximately 84.4% of the total biomass. The dominant species contributed substantially to community biomass, highlighting their important role in shaping ecosystem productivity. These relationships suggest that belowground biomass and dominant-species biomass may serve as useful indicators for estimating plot-scale biomass patterns in Zoige grasslands. This dataset provides a baseline reference for Zoige grassland ecosystem evaluation and supports future applications in carbon cycle accounting, biodiversity conservation, ecological modelling, and integration into global grassland data frameworks.

Source: Scientific Data

DOI: 10.1038/s41597-026-07747-6