The SALVIAS vegetation inventory database (http://www.salvias.net; GIVD ID 00-00-003) is a compilation of 13,661 vegetation inventories from around the world, with emphasis on the Americas. 12,962 inventories from the USA are shared with VegBank (http://www.vegbank.org); the remaining 699 inventories are mostly tropical forest plots from Mexico and Central and South America, and are available only via SALVIAS. The majority of the plots unique to SALVIAS contain individual measurements of trees, shrubs, lianas and hemiepiphytes, rather than aggregate observations (counts or percent cover). The two most common methods represented are 0.1 ha transects with a minimum stem diameter of 2.5 cm (523 plots) and 1 ha tree plots with a minimum stem diameter of 10 cm dbh (63 plots). The SALVIAS database also contains a taxonomically-standardized version of the Alwyn Gentry Forest Transects, also available in its original form for the Missouri Botanical Gardens website (http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/gentry/transect.shtml)