A systematic florula of a disturbed urban habitat: Pavements of Sheffield, England

Human settlements are of increasing interest to ecologists, a fact demonstrated by the recent cluster of book-length treatments of the topic (Forman 2008, McDonnell et al. 2009, Gaston 2010, Niemelä et al. 2011, Wilson 2011, Forman 2014). The natural world as a fascinating feature of towns and cities has a much longer history (e.g. Fitter 1945), and has also played a strong part in local biological conservation in some countries over the late 20th Century (Goode 2014). Despite much existing information on urban plant and animal communities resulting from these trends, very little, easily accessible, systematic data on urban biodiversity is currently available.

Few systematic, randomised surveys at fine spatial grain exist for urban habitats, and even fewer of these surveys are in the public domain. This study was designed as a systematic florula (i.e. a small flora) of a relatively discrete urban habitat in order to provide a baseline that would enable robust insights into future environmental change. In addition, the dataset is likely to be useful for comparative studies of plant traits, particularly those of highly disturbed habitats (Williams et al. 2009). The survey is an occupancy study of the vascular plants of pavements (i.e. sidewalks) within 16 500 x 500 m (0.25 km²) urban grid cells, stratified by quadrant at the scale of the focal city (Sheffield, England) in order to provide more even coverage. The final dataset comprises 862 records of 183 taxa.