Pre-restoration vegetation data, Little Saint Francis River chat pile site, Missouri, USA, 2017 and 2018 (ver. 1.1, September 2026)

This data set includes geospatial data and tables providing location, environmental, and vegetation data collected in 2017 and 2018 at the Little Saint Francis River chat pile restoration site, Fredericktown, Madison County, Missouri. Restoration actions are being implemented as part of the settlement for the Madison County Mines Superfund site to compensate the public for losses of natural resources and the services they provide as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Southeast Missouri Lead Mining District case. Data were collected prior to and during the early stages of restoration actions to restore bottomland habitat, reduce invasive species abundance, and improve upland woodland habitat by introducing prescribed burning to reduce stem density and favor fire-tolerant species. Restoration monitoring was designed to quantify changes in plant community attributes relevant to these goals. Pre-restoration vegetation sampling quantified plant community composition, enabled refinement of restoration objectives and identification of management strategies appropriate for USDA Ecological Site Descriptions, and yielded maps to visualize baseline invasive species abundances and inform eradication planning.
 
Version 1.1 adds the Access database (v 2604) used to collect and manage data during the project. This database provides functions to facilitate data collection and reporting. These include the ability to customize the domain of available species to the study area, built-in formatting restrictions, domain restrictions and drop-down lists to reduce errors and improve efficiency. Photographs or other files can be saved as embedded attachments to each plot record, in addition to being recorded in a text field. Built-in queries allow quick assessment of common measures relating to plant community development, such as species richness, exotic:native species ratios and woody stem density. Formatted reports are provided for plot-and project-level species lists. Originally structured to allow deployment on tablets and laptops for field data collection, the database can also be used for data entry after sampling events.
 

Two versions of the database are provided. The first (Restoration_database_LSFR.accdb) includes data from this project to allow exploration of the data management, querying, and reporting functions with real data. Included data are from the "Plots,csv", "Species_Cover.csv" and "Woody_Stems.csv" files included with the original data release. The second version (Restoration_database.accdb) has had all data stripped from the tables to allow use for other projects. Although developed for plant data collection using species symbols from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) PLANTS database (www.plants.usda.gov), the database may be adaptable to other taxa. The database includes instructions for uploading state plant lists from USDA or other sources.
 

Appearance on screen may not be as originally designed. No warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the display or utility of the database on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty. Users should not use this data for critical applications without a full awareness of its limitations: users are advised to explore the queries to understand the assumptions and basis for calculations made.