Long-term population dynamics of individually mapped Sonoran Desert winter annuals from the Desert Laboratory, Tucson AZ

Desert annual plants have played an important role as model organisms in the development of understanding of how organisms adapt to variable and unpredictable environments. They have also been used to exemplify ideas about non-equilibrium community dynamics. The goal of this data set is to provide a comprehensive long-term data set on demographic variation and covariation for a guild of desert winter annual plants. Germination, survival fecundity and seed bank dynamics have been assessed on a set of permanent plots since 1982 at the Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. Data is provided for individual plant including germination date, death date, fecundity, viable seed bank and in some years, Cartesian coordinates within plots. Viable seed densities for replicated soil samples are provided for all species since 1990. A species by year summary of vital rates is also provided.