A biomass equation dataset for common shrub species in China

Abstract. Shrub biomass equations provide an accurate, efficient and convenient method in estimating biomass of shrubland ecosystems and biomass of the shrub layer in forest ecosystems at various spatial and temporal scales. In recent decades, many shrub biomass equations have been reported mainly in journals, books and postgraduate's dissertations. However, these biomass equations are applicable for limited shrub species with respect to a large number of shrub species widely distributed in China, which severely restricted the study of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function, such as biomass, production, and carbon budge. Therefore, we firstly carried out a critical review of published literature (from 1982 to 2019) on shrub biomass equations in China, and then developed biomass equations for the dominant shrub species using a unified method based on field measurements of 738 sites in shrubland ecosystems across China. Finally, we constructed the first comprehensive biomass equation dataset for China’s common shrub species. This dataset consists of 822 biomass equations specific to 167 shrub species and has significant representativeness to the geographical, climatic and shrubland vegetation features across China. The dataset is freely available at https://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.00641 for noncommercial scientific applications, and this dataset fills a significant gap in woody biomass equations and provides key parameters for biomass estimation in studies on terrestrial ecosystem structure and function.