A compendium of earthworm data sources and associated information from the UK and Ireland, 1891-2021

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This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

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https://doi.org/10.5285/1a1000a8-4e7e-4851-8784-94c7ba3e164f

This dataset presents a compendium of field-based earthworm data sources and associated meta-data from across the United Kingdom and Ireland (‘Worm source’). These were compiled up to 2021 and include 257 data sources, the earliest dating back to 1891. Source meta-data covers the type of quantitative earthworm data (i.e. incidence, abundance, biomass, taxa), methodological details (e.g. sampling method/s, location/s, whether sampled plots were natural or experimental, sampling year/s), and environmental information (e.g. habitat/land-use, inclusion of climate data and basic soil properties). Data sources were collected through literature searches on Web of Science and Google Scholar, as well as directly from original authors/data holders where possible. The data sources were compiled with the aim of gathering quantitative data on earthworm species and populations to develop earthworm abundance and niche models, and toward a modelling framework for earthworm impacts on soil processes.

This work is part of the Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics (SOC-D) project funded by the NERC UK-SCAPE programme (Grant reference NE/R016429/1).

Publication date: 2022-05-30

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Format

Comma-separated values (CSV)

Spatial information

Study area

Spatial representation type

Tabular (text)

Spatial reference system

WGS 84

Temporal information

Temporal extent

1891-01-01 to 2021-12-31

Provenance & quality

A systematic literature search was conducted to find data sources using Web of Science and Google Scholar (in June/July 2020). This used the following search term:
(Earthworm* OR Oligochaeta OR Annelid* OR Lumbric* OR Clitellat*) AND (Diversity OR “Species richness” OR “OTU” OR Abundance OR individual* OR Density OR “tax* richness” OR “Number” OR Richness OR Biomass) AND (UK OR “United Kingdom” OR England OR Wales OR Scotland OR “NI” OR “Northern Ireland” OR “Ireland” OR “ROI”)
Publications were selected and meta-data recorded if they contained location information and the presence of at least one species of earthworm or abundance/biomass data obtained from the field. Further publications were found through screening of review papers and contact with selected authors for additional information and resources, including published and unpublished datasets. In total, 257 data sources were compiled. Original sources (i.e. published papers, book chapters) could not be obtained for 17 studies at the time of compiling meta-data and are thus lacking any additional information.

Licensing and constraints

This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

Cite this dataset as:

Mason, K.E.; Ashwood, F.; Schmidt, O.; Cosby, J.; Keith, A.M. (2022). A compendium of earthworm data sources and associated information from the UK and Ireland, 1891-2021. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/1a1000a8-4e7e-4851-8784-94c7ba3e164f

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