Can you imagine how many hours of roadside fieldwork went into this?
We’ve just published the MIREN road survey database, and the accompanying paper led together with Sylvia Haider: 170,000 georeferenced plant records, covering 6,854 vascular plant species across 3,364 plots in 25 mountain regions spanning every continent except Antarctica.
If you haven’t heard of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) yet, now is the time to pay attention: since 2007, a growing number of dedicated MIRENers have gone out every five years to survey the vegetation along mountain roads in their region, building what has become one of the largest standardized vegetation monitoring datasets of its kind.
That massive dataset is now fully open access, with all data up to 2022 included.
If your first reaction is “wow, I wish I’d been part of that” — good news, this is your lucky day. We’re already preparing for the next round of monitoring in 2027, when virtually all of these regions (and a few new ones) will go out again to see what’s changed. Want to join with your favourite mountain region? Just send us a message!
The 3D lab 