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 (2016)

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.

This dataset is included in the following collections

Earthworm field data from the NERC-BBSRC-Defra-Scottish Government Soil security programme project SoilBioHedge - Harnessing hedgerow soil biodiversity for restoration of arable soil quality and resilience to climatic extremes and land use changes