Occurrence and environmental data for aquatic plants of Minnesota from 1999-2018

The aquatic flora of Minnesota's freshwater lakes have been extensively surveyed for purposes of resource assessment, research, and ecosystem management. Despite widespread use of a common method for vegetation sampling ("point-intercept surveys"), these records have existed to-date in disparate locations without unification. Here we present a first-of-its-kind dataset of point-level occurrences, relative abundances, and associated environmental data for macrophytes (freshwater plants) across Minnesota. The data encompass 3,194 surveys of 1,520 lakes and ponds performed over a 19-year timespan. A total of 367,382 points were sampled, across which 231 taxa were recorded. Macrophyte occurrence data and depth, as well as point-level relative-plant-abundance measures for a subset of surveys, were collated, cleaned, and joined to geospatial data and Secchi-depth measurements of water clarity, enabling light availability, a primary control on aquatic plant growth, to be estimated. The data are well-suited for ecological analyses across multiple spatial scales and can be used to address both fundamental and applied ecological questions.