This file contains the abiotic variables we measured at 20m intervals over the entire 9.6 ha Scotty Creek ForestGEO plot (i.e. at each of the 287 points labelled as "posts" in the schematic diagram "scotty_plot_layout.pdf") on various dates between 2012 and 2018 (specific measurement dates are included in the variable names).

column names are formatted as follows:
"variable name"_"date measured (ddmmyyyy)"_"units"
NAs mean various things depending on the variable (see variable key below)

explanations of variable names:
vwc = volumetric water content (soil depth of the measurement is indicated in the column name) that has been calibrated using equations specific to the soils and expressed as a percent (see methods section)
ft = depth to the frost table (NA indicates no frost table was found with a 2m probe)
org = depth of the organic soil layer (NA indicates that no mineral soil was found with a 1.5m auger OR that the frost table was encountered before mineral soil was found)
fib = depth of the fibric soil layer (NA indicates no discernible fibric layer was present)
vpo = von post qualitative assessment of the degree of humification in the upper 5-10cm of soil (values could range from 1 to 10, with 1 meaning completely undecomposed and 10 meaning very highly decomposed)
snowdepth = depth of the snowpack in cm, measured using a GPS automatic snow depth probe with +/- 5cm accuracy (Snow-Hydro LLC, Fairbanks, USA)

note that we summarized major gradients in these data using a mixed principal components analysis in the R package 'PCAmixdata' after converting vwc, ft, and org into categorical (ordinal) variables due to issues with data truncation - see methods section of the paper for a full description of this.