Abstract To understand future changes in community composition due to global changes, the knowledge about community dynamics is of crucial importance. To improve our understanding about processes and patterns involved in maintaining species rich neotropical ecosystems, we provide here a dataset from the one hectare Forest of Seu Nico (FSN) Dynamics Plot from Southeastern Brazil. We report diameter at breast height, basal area and height measurements of 2868 trees and treelets identified during two census spanning over a nine-year period. Furthermore, soil properties and understory light availability of all 100 10 x 10m subplots from the one hectare FSN Dynamics Plot during the second census are given.