Soil properties, function and biodiversity from project U-GRASS: Understanding and enhancing soil ecosystem services and resilience in UK grass and croplands

These datasets have been produced by the Natural Environment Research Council, Soil Security Program project U-GRASS (Understanding and enhancing soil ecosystem services and resilience in UK grass and croplands). This project investigates how soil organisms act to sustain soils and soil functions and how these interactions are affected by climate change and the way we manage our land. The project examines the effects of land use change on soil biodiversity, soil properties and soil services in different soil systems around the UK, the specific ways in which biodiversity regulates soil and its services, and how soil nutrient inputs affect the soil biota in the cycling of carbon. This was a 3 year, £598,808 project, running from July 2015 through to November 2018.Organisations involved in this project were: NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, United Kingdom (Lead Research Organisation); BBSRC, United Kingdom (Co-funder); University of Wales, United Kingdom (Collaboration); Earth Trust (Collaboration); James Hutton Institute (Collaboration); Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom (Collaboration); Natural England, United Kingdom (Collaboration); The Wildlife Trusts (Collaboration); Agrii (Collaboration); Scotland's Rural College (Collaboration); Myerscough College (Collaboration); Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) (Collaboration); National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS) (Collaboration); Indigro (Collaboration; IRSTEA National Research Institute Science and Technology (Collaboration).

The three datasets presented here provide information relating to the survey soils’ physio-chemical properties, soil functional measurements (through assessment of soil enzymatic activities) and soil biodiversity measures derived from eDNA.