TERN Ecosystem Surveillance is a plot-based field monitoring platform that tracks the direction and magnitude of change in Australia’s environments. Information on soils and vegetation is collected according to standardized, widely endorsed and consistent protocols across all plots, and includes the collection of soil and vegetation samples for subsequent analysis. Data collected by TERN is stratified across the entire continent to ensure adequate coverage of major Australian ecosystems, and measures are repeated at least once a decade, with the aim to establish replicate plots throughout the ecosystem types existing within Australia’s Major Vegetation Groups (MVG’s). Additional plots located in key environmental transition zones will be re-measured every five to ten years. TERN users include researchers, land managers and policy-makers who require access to terrestrial ecosystem attributes collected over time from continental scale to field sites at hundreds of representative locations. TERN provides model-ready data that enables users to detect and interpret changes in ecosystems. In addition, TERN curates The TERN Australia Soil and Herbarium Collection, with over 180,000 vegetation and soil samples (and associated contextual environmental data), available to loan through the EcoPlots Samples portal via an Expression of Interest. TERN’s world-class surveillance monitoring infrastructure will support long-term ecological inventory, environmental monitoring, environmental prediction, reporting and assessment, and underpin decisions about our greatest environmental challenges.

The Victorian Alpine Plot Network Vegetation – Phenology Transect Package contains phenology data which are sampled on the same dates, three times a year at transects situated at an altitude of 1400 m to 1880 m. These transects were established as a natural experiment - to provide infrastructure to validate the findings from the ATEX manipulated, experimental plots. The aim is to describe the phonological responses of alpine plants to environmental variables and assess the usefulness of this measure to assess vulnerability to changing abiotic (e.g. climate) and biotic (e.g. invasive species) factors. This is part of a dataset that spans from during data collected in 2011 to document long-term effects directly through climate and indirectly through biotic interactions (see methods for more information). The Victorian Alpine Plot Network research plots are revisited 4 times per year. A synopsis of related data packages which have been collected as part of the Victorian Alpine Plot Network’s full program is provided at http://www.ltern.org.au/index.php/ltern-plot-networks/victorian-alpine