Soil physical, chemical, and biological properties (0-1 m) at five long-term grassland-to-woodland land use contrasts across England, 2018-2019

This dataset contains soil chemical, physical and biological properties for up to six soil layers between 0 and 100 cm, measured once at each of the five long-term grassland-to-woodland land use contrasts across England between November 2018 and March 2019. Each of the plots was further divided into three grids (grassland grids 1 to 3 / woodland grids 4 to 6) with grids 1 and 6 being the furthest apart. The contrast boundary is between grids 3 and 4. In each plot, nine sampling locations were randomly sampled (three in each grid). The five grassland-to-woodland contrasts were located across England: Gisburn (Gisburn-1, Gisburn-2), Alice Holt, Wytham Woods, and Kielder Forest.

Common soil physical and chemical properties were measured; field water content, soil water content, electrical conductivity, bulk density, pH in DIW, pH in CaCl2, Loss-on-ignition, total soil carbon, total soil nitrogen, and total soil phosphorus. Less common properties were also measured; extractable soil nitrogen, dissolved organic carbon, soil aggregate sizes, and soil texture. And for specific soil cores these additional following properties were measured; soil density fractions and their carbon and nitrogen contents, cation exchange capacity, Sodium concentration, potassium concentration, calcium concentration, magnesium concentration, and extracellular enzyme activities. Derived metrics resulting from the bioinformatic processing of the raw sequence files are provided as part this dataset.

The properties in this dataset are co-located with ANPP estimates, litter layer depth measurements, soil hydraulic measurements (soil water release curves and hydraulic conductivity), earthworm counts and identification. A file is provided to connect all co-located measurements.