Soil moisture, temperature and bulk density and earthworm abundance and biomass along transects in arable fields and ley strips in farms in North Yorkshire, England

https://doi.org/10.5285/2c84ae3f-f785-4151-8efb-6a1598fd5a65

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Data are presented on earthworm abundance with distance from hedgerows was recorded for arable fields and pasture leys at farms at Little Langton, Hutton Wandesley, Overton and Whenby, Yorkshire. Sampling was carried out 12 to 26th May 2016. Pits were excavated and soil hand sorted for earthworms. Mustard solution was then poured into the pit and any emerging earthworms collected. All earthworms were preserved in ethanol for identification using the Sims and Gerard Field studies key. At each pit the following measurements were also taken: soil moisture, soil temperature, soil bulk density. The samples were taken to determine the influence of leys on soil quality by Miranda Prendergast-Miller and colleagues as part of the SoilBioHedge project (Grant Reference NE/M017095/1) funded by the NERC Soil Security Programme. (Grant Reference NE/M017044/1).

Publication date: 2019-07-10

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Format

Comma-separated values (CSV)

Spatial information

Study area

Spatial representation type

Tabular (text)

Spatial reference system

GB place names

Temporal information

Temporal extent

2016-05-12 to 2016-05-26

Provenance & quality

Soil pits (18 x 18 x 15 cm) were excavated along transects and the soil hand sorted for earthworms. Mustard solution was then poured into the pit and any emerging earthworms collected. All earthworms were preserved in ethanol for identification using the Sims and Gerard Field studies key. At each pit the following measurements were also taken: three soil moisture readings in millivolts (mV) were taken at both 5 and 10 cm depth using a ML3 ThetaProbe Soil Moisture Sensor, (Delta-T Devices); single soil temperature measurements at 5 and 10 cm depth using a Checktemp®1 probe (Hanna Instruments); soil bulk density samples were taken at 5 and 15 cm soil depth using steel bulk density rings (118 cm3), soil density was calculated on an oven dry basis. The data were entered into Excel spreadsheets and exported as comma separated value files (csv) for ingestion into the Environmental Information Data Centre.

Licensing and constraints

Another author needed to be added to the data resource.

If you need access to the archived version, please contact the EIDC

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

Cite this dataset as:

Prendergast-Miller, M.T.; Hodson, M.E. (2019). Soil moisture, temperature and bulk density and earthworm abundance and biomass along transects in arable fields and ley strips in farms in North Yorkshire, England. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/2c84ae3f-f785-4151-8efb-6a1598fd5a65

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