Physical, chemical and biological properties of European grassland soils subjected to laboratory climatic disturbance

This dataset encompasses metadata and measurements from an experiment imposing four different climatic disturbances to soils collected from 30 European grassland sites, covering a wide range of soil types and climatic conditions. Under controlled lab conditions, samples of each soil were subjected to either a two-week drought (10% Water Holding Capacity (WHC)), flooding (100% WHC), freezing (-20°C), or heatwave (35°C), alongside a control treatment, followed by a month of recovery. We assessed the response of microbial communities at the end of the disturbance, and one day, one week, and four weeks after ending the disturbance, by whole-genome metagenomic, bacterial and fungal sequencing. We assessed soil functioning by measuring microbial enzymatic activities, substrate-induced respiration profiles, and carbon and nitrogen fluxes. The dataset contains detailed information on initial sites sampled, treatments imposed, measurements recorded as well as European Nucleotide Archive accession numbers for the molecular data produced.