2026-10-11T21:10:56Z https://www.scidb.cn/oai

10.57760/sciencedb.ecodb.00296 2026-05-08T17:27:39Z

2026-05-08 A county-level species composition dataset of grassland vegetation along the routes of the China Railway Express (Xinjiang section, 1991-2024) doi:10.57760/sciencedb.ecodb.00296 en The China Railway Express (CRE) is an international logistics corridor via railways spanning the Eurasian continent. Its Xinjiang section traverses key zones of the Eurasian steppe and desert grasslands of northwestern inland China, posing potential threats to regional ecological security. However, a baseline dataset on grassland species composition and distribution along this corridor is lacking. Based on an early checklist of wild vascular plants in Xinjiang and a field community survey conducted from June to August 2024 across 20 counties and cities along the CRE routes, we complied this dataset. It comprises 2,290 species of grassland plants belonging to 595 genera and 88 families, accounting for approximately 55.7% of all plant species in Xinjiang. It also includes 24 newly recorded species and updates the geographical distributions of 84 species. Preliminary analyses show that the three most species-rich families are Asteraceae (375 species), Poaceae (255 species), and Fabaceae (197 species). Among the geographical divisions along the CRE routes, the Ili River Valley, the Ebinur lowlands, and the northern piedmont plains of the Tianshan Mountains harbor relatively high species richness (1,594, 1,586, and 1,505 species, respectively), while the Turpan-Hami Basin supports comparatively lower richness (1,028 species). The numbers of species restricted to each of these four divisions are 371, 89, 140, and 88, respectively, while 705 species are shared across all the four divisions. This dataset provides baseline information on grassland vegetation along the CRE corridor, offering high-quality reference data for regional biodiversity conservation zonation, ecological impact assessment of transport corridors, and strategic management over the balance of ecology and trade along “the Belt and Road” logistics corridors. China Railway Express; grassland vegetation; species dataset; species distribution; XinJiang He, Dong PUBLIC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dataset Science Data Bank