29 September 2023: sPlot project #49 was approved by the Steering Committee. It is led by Camille Delavaux from ETH Zürich and is entitled "Global plant invasions: the role of native diversity, human disturbance, and mutualisms". All sPlot projects are available here.

25 September 2023: New sPlot paper published! The paper Rooting depth and xylem vulnerability are independent woody plant traits jointly selected by aridity, seasonality, and water table depth, lead by Daniel Laughlin, resulted from sPlot project #31 and is now published in New Phytologist.

05 September 2023: Second ordinary meeting of the sPlot consortium during the IAVS Annual Symposium in Australia. You can find a report of the meeting in the website section "Meetings and Workshops".

28 March 2023: New project approved! sPlot project #48 is led by Matt Scowen and will investigate how the inclusion of biodiversity-related data in Ecosystem Service models increases model performance. You can have a look on all sPlot projects here.

27 February 2023: New sPlot paper published: Traits of dominant plant species drive normalized difference vegetation index in grasslands globally. Thore Engel lead this great study, which is the first paper resulting from sPlot project #08, stay tunned because there is more to come! Meanwhile you can check all sPlot publications here.

22 February 2023: sPlot project #47 was approved by the Steering Committee. It is entitled "Strong correlation of soil phosphorus contents and plant-community leaf phosphorus contents at the global scale" and is led by Helge Bruelheide and Georg Hähn. You can check all sPlot projects here.

31 January 2023: The Steering Committee nominates Helge Bruelheide as its chairperson for the next two years.

26 January 2023: The opt-in phase for project #46 is now open until February 25.

16 January 2023: The new elected Steering Committe is formed by Idoia Biurrun (Spain), Helge Bruelheide (Germany), Milan Chytrý (Czech Repulic), Francesco Sabatini (Italy) and Susan Wiser (New Zeland).

04 January 2023: Last day of voting for the Steering Committee.

05 December 2022: Election for the Steering Committee 2023 - 2024 are open!

03 November 2022: We have one more project approved: #46 'Comparison of the global distribution of functional and phylogenetic diversity in plant communities', lead by Georg Hähn. Here is the link for all projects being developed with sPlot data. 

22 September 2022: The opt-in period for sPlot project #43 is open from September 20 to October 20. 

13 September 2022: sPlot project #45 "A leaf trait-based classification to better trace the paleoecological context of fossil assemblages" was approved by the Steering Committee. You can check all sPlot projects here.

01 September 2022: One more sPlot paper was published! Findings from Project #11, lead by Francesco Sabatini, are now openly available in Nature Communications as the article entitled Global patterns of vascular plant alpha diversity. You can check the list of all sPlot publications here.

01 August 2022: There is a new opt-in survey for the project #30 "Estimating dark diversity by using species co-occurrences: refining methods for large vegetation plot databases" lead by Meelis Pärtel. This resurvey will be open until September 01 and is motivated by the update in the version of sPlot used in the project, from sPlot 2.1 to sPlot 3.0.

25 July 2022: We have a new phylogenetic tree for sPlot 3.0 containing more than 70.000 plant species! You can check this incredible work by Georg Hähn here. The phylogenetic data will also be made available for sPlot members who are willing to use it in their sPlot projects. 

30 June 2022: Realization of an ordinary meeting of the sPlot consortium during the IAVS Annual Symposium in Madrid. You can find a report of the meeting in the website section "Meetings and Workshops".

31 May 2022: New project approved: #44 - "Impacts of land use change on plant species composition across ecoregions". Opt-in period will open after data extraction.

09 May 2022: New project approved: #43 - "Coniferous forests of the Earth: looking for common patterns". The opt-in period will open soon.

1 April 2022: Gabriella Damasceno took office as new sPlot Coordinator.

13 March 2022: New project approved: #42 - "Identifying threatened groundwater dependent ecosystems as local biodiversity hotspots globally via remote sensing". The opt-in period will open soon.

27 January 2022: sPlotOpen featured in Ouest France - a mainstream newspaper in France - Link to article

15 January 2022: sPlot selected a new scientific coordinator. Dr. Gabriella Damasceno. Expected to start on April 1st.

19 November 2021: sPlot is now recruiting a new scientific coordinator. Apply before Dec 1 2021 - Link to Job announcement

25 September 2021: New project approved (#41). The opt-in period will open soon.

21 September 2021: Two new publications our during the summer: Project #02 - sPlotOpen – An environmentally balanced, open-access, global dataset of vegetation plots - and Project #25 - Root traits explain plant species distributions along climatic gradients yet challenge the nature of ecological trade-offs

02 June 2021: New project approved (#40). The opt-in period will open soon.

19 May 2021: Many exciting news in the just released sPlot Newsletter 10.

19 May 2021: The opt-in period for project #39 is now open until June 19, 2021.

14 May 2021: Two new papers out from Project #18 - Global functional variation in alpine vegetation is now out in the Journal of Vegetation Science. Global patterns and drivers of alpine plant species richness is now out in Global Ecology and Biogeography.

04 May 2021: New paper out! Project #27 - Different sets of traits explain abundance and distribution patterns of European plants at different spatial scales. Just published in the Journal of Vegetation Science.

21 April 2021: The Opt-in period for projects #31, #34, #36 & #38 is now open until May, 22, 2021.

21 April 2021: Two new projects approved (#38 & #39). The opt-in period will open soon.

17 March 2021: New paper out! Project #24 - The relationship between niche breadth and range size of beech (Fagus) species worldwide. Just published in Journal of Biogeography

07 January 2021: The Steering Committee for the term 2021-2022 has been elected. Helge Bruelheide has been confirmed as sPlot chair.

04 January 2021: A new project (#37) approved. The opt-in period will open soon.

09 November 2020: Three new projects (#34-#36) approved. The opt-in period will open soon.

07 November 2020: A new dataset joined sPlot - RanVegDunes - EU-IT-020

05 August 2020:Newsletter 9 is out. sPlot 3.0 is released

04 August 2020:The Opt-in period for projects #27, #28, #29 and #30 is now open until 03/09/2020

22 May 2020: Three new projects (#31-#33) approved by the Steering committee. The opt-in period will open soon.

15 January 2020: Five new projects (#26-#30) approved by the Steering committee. The opt-in period will open soon.

02 December 2019: New sPlot paper out - Project #06 - Masha van der Sande - Similar factors underlie tree abundance in forests in native and alien ranges

30 October 2019: New sPlot paper out - Project #10 - Anna Weigand - Global fern and lycophyte richness explained: How regional and local factors shape plot richness

16-20 October 2019: sPlot presented at the 9th Bonner Humboldt-Preisträger Forum in Bonn

02 May 2019: Scientia Halensis, the scientific magazine of Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, talks about us. See the article describing sPlot here (in German)

09 April 2019: New paper sPlot - a new tool for global vegetation analyses published in Journal of Vegetation Science. Helge Bruelheide, Jürgen Dengler, Borja Jiménez‐Alfaro & Oliver Purschke + 172 coauthors.

05 March 2019:Three new projects (#23. #24, #25) approved by the Steering committee. The opt-in period is now open until 05.04.2019.

24 January 2019: The Steering Committee confirms Helge Bruelheide as sPlot Chair.

15 January 2019: The Steering Committee for the term 2019-2020 has been elected.

20 December 2018:Two new projects (#21, #22) approved. #21 is about the evolution of secondary woodiness in plants, while #22 is a macroecological survey of intraspecific plant trait variation. See the Project section.

14 December 2018: The new sPlot rules, approved by the absolute majority of sPlot over a 1-month ballot, come into force. They are available in the materials section

19 November 2018: The first sPlot paper is out. Global trait-environment relationships of plant communities was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. Helge Bruelheide and Ute Jandt lead 106 coauthors to the goal. Read the plain language summary here.

27 September 2018: The terms of the agreement with the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) for using sPlot data in European studies is now available in the materials section.

24 September 2018: sPlot Coordinator Francesco Maria Sabatini presents sPlot at the 10th International Conference on Ecological Informatics in Jena (Germany)

19 September 2018: The sPlot Steering Committee approves two new projects (#19, #20). The first in aims at achieving a mechanistic description of land uses for ecological studies. The second will explore trait-dependent extinctions across flowering plants in biodiversity hotspots. Projects #4 and #7 are instead discontinued

25 April 2018: sPlot is now on Twitter! Follow us @sPlot_iDiv

01 March 2018: Francesco Maria Sabatini appointed as new sPlot coordinator

14 November 2017: The sPlot Steering Committee approves two new projects (#17, #18) about global diversity patterns of alpine vegetation

29 June 2017: The sPlot poster "An invitation to join sPlot" is now available in sPlot/Materials/sPlot Posters. You can also download here

21 June 2017: sPlot meeting: several members of the sPlot consortium met in Palermo during the 60th IAVS Annual Symposium 2017. New databases agreed to join sPlot!

21 June 2017: Borja Jiménez-Alfaro gave a talk in the 60th IAVS Annual Symposium 2017 (Palermo, Italy) to present sPlot project #14 (Functional convergence of terrestrial ecosystems within world biomes). Thanks to the feedback received so far! 

13 June 2017: sPlot Newsletter 7 released (see all newsletters here)

15 May 2017: Description of all sPlot projects is now available in https://www.idiv.de/en/sdiv/working_groups/wg_pool/splot/projects.html

03 April 2017: New project proposals (No 13, 14 and 15) have been approved by the Steering Committee! See the full list of sPlot project proposals here 

07 March 2017: Project proposal approved: "Temperate deciduous forests of the Northern Hemisphere: historical and macroclimatic drivers of diversity in floristic composition, functional traits and regeneration niches", led by Robert Peet and Javier Loidi.

25 January 2017: The new Steering Committee for the period 2017-2018 has been elected: Congratulations to Helge Bruelheide, Milan Chytrý, Jürgen Dengler, Florian Jansen and Valério De Patta Pillar

22 December 2016: Elections of the Steering Committee start

28 November 2016: New sPlot letter N.6 was delivered and is available here

2–5 November 2016: sPlot Meeting III was conducted in Leipzig with 28 scientists from nine countries.

01 October 2016: Borja Jiménez-Alfaro appointed as the new sPlot coordinator

21 January 2016Official release of sPlot 2.0 covering 1,115,705 plots from 110 source databases from 130 countries

November 2015: Unified taxonomic backbone (generated by Oliver Purschke) that standardizes the in total 122,901 species names in sPlot 2.0 and TRY 3.0

5–9 April 2015: A small team of sPlot people (Helge Bruelheide, Jürgen Dengler, Stephan Hennekens and Ute Jandt) met in Halle to prepare and join the data for sPlot 2.0, which will contain nearly 1.2 million plots.

01 April 2015: sPlot Postdoc Jürgen Dengler became Interim Professor of Plant Ecology at the University of Bayreuth, but will nevertheless continue as sPlot Coordinator.

18 Februar 2015: The fourth sPlot Letter as well as the new IBS poster are now available here.

2–5 December 2014: sPlot Meeting II was conducted in Leipzig with 28 scientists from nine countries. More information isthird sPlot Letter.

25 November 2014: The second sPlot Letter appeared and you can find it here.

20 November 2014: Release of sPlot 1.0, the first fully functional sPlot database with 840,000 plots (700,000 georeferenced) and its intersection with the trait data of TRY 2.0.

19 August 2014: After a major import, sPlot contains now more than 550,000 vegetation plots from 56 databases and 52 countries of the Eastern Hemisphere (sPlot 0.9).

15 August 2014: Invitations for the 2nd sPlot Meeting (2–5 December 2014) have been sent out.

16 July 2014: The sPlot logo was chosen by the Steering Committee.

6–10 April 2014: During a working meeting in Halle, the sPlot database came to life by joining major parts of the European Vegetation Archive with the first three extra-European databases from Siberia, West Africa and South Africa (sPlot 0.8).

15 December 2013: sPlot decided to have its database managed with the software TURBOVEG 3 (prototype) by Stephan Hennekens (Alterra, Wageningen), which is able to join multiple TURBOVEG 2 databases and is also used by the European database EVA.

16 September 2013: sPlot made a basic agreement with the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN), active in the Americas, on cooperation and sharing of vegetation-plot data.

3–9 September 2013: Representatives of the sDiv Core Team presented the project to the plant trait community at the sDiv Working Group Meeting “TRY”.

27 August 2013: The fundamental structure of the sPlot database was elaborated and fixed during a meeting in Jena.

20 July 2013: sPlot started to invite the first vegetation-plot databases to join the sPlot Consortium.

12 July 2013: The Governance and Data Property Rules of the sPlot Working Group have been approved by the sPlot Steering Committee after detailed discussion with the involved parties.

10 July 2013: A second sPlot Planning Meeting took place at the Biodiversity Informatics Unit in Jena.

4 June 2013: A small sPlot Planning Meeting took place at the Biodiversity Informatics Unit in Jena. At this meeting sPlot entered into an agreement with Prof. Milan Chytrý, secretary of the European Vegetation Survey (EVS), that European plot data will be contributed to sPlot from the comprehensive European data set that was recently compiled for the Braun-Blanquet Project, depending on the consent of the Braun-Blanquet project contributors.

15 June 2013:Dr. Jürgen Dengler was employed as sDiv Postdoc (0.25 fte) to coordinate the sPlot activities between the meetings, in particular the compilation of the global vegetation-plot database.

6–9 March 2013: The 1st sPlot Meeting took place at iDiv in Leipzig with 42 participants from 10 countries. There also a five-head sPlot Steering Committee was elected.