Sites
The Access form below illustrates the information given in NTT's sites table:
A table in Excel format with the information for all 7485 sites is available for download here: Sites table.xlxs
Site name and code:
The site name includes a geographic landmark followed by the vegetation type, both in the main language of the country. The site code is a unique eight-letter code that may be used in matrix management and analyses.
Geographic information:
This consists of the country, its political sub-unit (state, province, department etc.), the geographic coordinates of the site centre (in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal numbers), the altitude of the site centre obtained from Google Earth and given by the Shuttle Mission (SRTM), and the predominant slope aspect of the site regarding earthbound ocean winds.
Phytogeography:
This includes the Phytogeographic Domain (see map above) and Eco-region of the site. Domains and eco-regions adopted by NTT are adaptations of a number of classification systems available in the literatures, with special mention to Cabrera and Willink (1973: Biogeografía de América Latina) and NatureServe (2013,Terrestrial Ecological Systems of Latin America and the Caribbean). Corresponding numbers are given for use in matrices and analyses.
Vegetation features:
The classification of the vegetation following Oliveira-Filho (2015) is given here as both a full name and its six separate hierarchical components (thermic realm, elevation range, azonal factor where appropriate, leaf-flush and vegetation physiognomy). A brief main vegetation type is also given for the sake of simplicity.
Bioclimatic variables:
Monthly figures of rainfall and maximum, minimum and mean temperatures were obtained for the sites' central coordinates from Worldclim - Global Climate Data and used to obtain 18 bioclimatic variables. Because Worldclim is based on the less reliable altitudes given by SRTM, the indicated standard corrections were applied to rainfall and temperature values when discrepancies in altitude were >100 m. The monthly figures were used to obtain 11 Worldclim bioclimatic variables and to produce Walter Climate Diagrams (see Figure further below) after interpolating value for 5-day intervals using arcsin functions. Five additional bioclimatic variables were obtained from these diagrams and another two through regressing known figures (meteorological stations) as response variables and WorldClim P1-P15 as predicting variables. The 18 variables are summarized below:
| 1 | Annual mean temperature (°C) | WorldClim P1 |
| 2 | Mean diurnal range (mean (mth. max-min)) (°C) | WorldClim P2 |
| 3 | Isothermality (P2/P7) | WorldClim P3 |
| 4 | Temperature seasonality (100*Stdev mth. temp) (°C) | WorldClim P4 |
| 5 | Maximum temperature of warmest month (°C) | WorldClim P5 |
| 6 | Minimum temperature of coldest month (°C) | WorldClim P6 |
| 7 | Temperature annual range (P5-P6) (°C) | WorldClim P7 |
| 8 | Annual precipitation (mm) | WorldClim P12 |
| 9 | Precipitation of wettest month (mm) | WorldClim P13 |
| 10 | Precipitation of driest month (mm) | WorldClim P14 |
| 11 | Precipitation seasonality (coefficient of variation mth. pptt.) (%) | WorldClim P15 |
| 12 | Duration of the water deficit period (days) | Walter climate diagram |
| 13 | Severity of the water deficit period (mm) | Walter climate diagram |
| 14 | Duration of the water excess period (days) | Walter climate diagram |
| 15 | Severity of the water excess period (mm) | Walter climate diagram |
| 16 | Hyperseasonality (% of rainfall in both deficit and excess) (%) | Walter climate diagram |
| 17 | Number of days with frost (days) | Regressions |
| 18 | Cloud interception or horizontal precipitation (mm) | Regressions |
Substrate-related variables:
Seven ecologically meaningful variables related to the substrate were produced from the visual analyses of Google Eath images of the sites (1 and 2), from the Harmonized World Soil Database v. 1.2 (3, 4, 6 and 7) and a combination of variables. Due to imprecisions related to soil local heterogeneity all variables were eventually transformed to ranked mid-class values as follows:
| 1 | Grassy cover (ground surface covered by herbs and grasses) | 5% intervals |
| 2 | Surface rockyness (% ground surface as exposed rocks) | |
| - Absent to Low (0-10% exposed rock) | 5% | |
| - Intermediate (10-30% exposed rock) | 20% | |
| - High (30-60% exposed rock) | 45% | |
| - Very high (60-100% exposed rock) | 80% | |
| 3 | Soil texture class (%) | |
| - Heavy clay (0-10% sand) | 5% | |
| - Light clay (10-20% sand) | 15% | |
| - Silty clay loam (20-30% sand) | 25% | |
| - Clay loam (30-40% sand) | 35% | |
| - Loam (40-50% sand) | 45% | |
| - Sandy clay (50-60% sand) | 55% | |
| - Sandy clay loam (60-70% sand) | 65% | |
| - Sandy loam (70-80% sand) | 75% | |
| - Loamy sand (80-90% sand) | 85% | |
| - Sand (90-100% sand) | 95% | |
| - Soil texture class | 25% | |
| - Soil texture class | 25% | |
| 4 | Soil drainage class (see EMBRAPA 2013 Soil Classification System) | |
| - Excessively drained | 5 | |
| - Somewhat excessively drained | 20 | |
| - Well drained | 35 | |
| - Moderately well drained | 50 | |
| - Imperfectly drained | 65 | |
| - Poorly drained | 80 | |
| - Very poorly drained | 95 | |
| 5 | Soil water storage (product variable) | |
| ((Ranked drainage class)+(100-Ranked surface rockiness)+(100-Ranked percentage sand))/3 | ||
| 6 | Soil fertility based on average TBS (% total bases saturation) | |
| - Hypo-dystrophyc (0-10% TBS) | 5% | |
| - Dystrophic (10-25% TBS) | 17% | |
| - Mesotrophic (25-50% TBS) | 37% | |
| - Eutrophic (50-75% TBS) | 67% | |
| - Hyper-eutrophic (75-100% TBS) | 87% | |
| 7 | Soil salinity classes based on average ECe (Electric conductivity) | |
| - No salinity | 0 | |
| - Slightly saline (ECe ca. 0.1-0.2 ds/m) | 15 | |
| - Low salinity (ECe ca. 0.3-0.4 ds/m) | 20 | |
| - Hypo-saline (ECe 0.5-1.0 ds/m) | 75 | |
| - Saline (ECe 1.0-3.0 dS/m) | ||