Soil and litter chemistry, soil microbial communities and litter decomposition from tropical forest and oil palm

Description: A study examining the interactions between soil chemistry, litter chemistry and soil microbial decomposers as controls on rates of litter decomposition across a tropical land use disturbance gradient. Co-located soil and litter samples were collected from old growth forest, moderately logged forest, heavily logged forest and oil palm plantations. Soil and litter were chemically characterised and soil bacterial and fungal community composition and abundance were measured. These were then combined in fully factorial ex-situ microcosms and measured litter decomposition rates at 3 time points during different stages of decomposition.Project: This dataset was collected as part of the following SAFE research project: Biodiversity and land-use impacts on tropical ecosystem function (BALI): Quantifying biogeochemistry across forest disturbance gradients in SabahFunding: These data were collected as part of research funded by: UK NERC-funded Biodiversity And Land-use Impacts on Tropical Ecosystem Function (BALI) consortium (Standard grant, NE/K016377/1)This dataset is released under the CC-BY 4.0 licence, requiring that you cite the dataset in any outputs, but has the additional condition that you acknowledge the contribution of these funders in any outputs.Permits: These data were collected under permit from the following authorities:Sabah Biodiversity Centre (Research licence JKM/MBS.1000-2/2 JLD.5 (20))Sabah Biodiversity Centre (Export licence JKM/MBS.1000-2/3 JLD.2 (70))XML metadata: GEMINI compliant metadata for this dataset is available hereFiles: This consists of 1 file: SAFE_Dataset.xlsxSAFE_Dataset.xlsxThis file contains dataset metadata and 5 data tables:Soil_Properties (described in worksheet Soil_Properties)Description: Basic measured soil propertiesNumber of fields: 9Number of data rows: 20Fields: Plot: Plot name corresponding to the GEM Carbon plot where soils were sampled (Field type: id)Plot_ID: Plot ID indicating land use as referenced in the Frontiers in forests and global change publication "Soil microbial community and litter quality controls on decomposition across a tropical forest disturbance gradient" (Field type: categorical)location_name: Name of subplot where soils were collected (Field type: location)gravimetric moisture content: Soil moisture content at the time of sample collection (Field type: numeric)soil_pH: Soil pH measured on fresh soils (Field type: numeric)soil_N: Total soil Nitrogen (Field type: numeric)soil_C: Tot