The soil quality of the world's largest refugee campsites located in the Hill forest of Bangladesh and the way forward to improve the soil quality

•Soil quality was measured for the degraded areas of the Rohingya refugee camps of Bangladesh.•The studied areas were categorized into low to medium fertility for total nitrogen and available potassium.•The studied areas were categorized into medium fertility for available phosphorus.•The studied areas were categorized into low fertility index for soil Electrical Conductivity (EC).•Native 40 tree species are recommended for the restoration of the degraded sites. The Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh are located in the forest areas of the Cox's Bazar South Forest Division. The construction of refugee camps has caused detrimental changes in the natural vegetation and soil quality of the campsites. The objectives of this study were to develop a database on the soil quality of the block plantation sites and to prescribe native species for plantation and site quality improvement. A total of 204 soil samples from 34 sites of block plantations and control-denuded hill sites were collected from the refugee camps. Soil physical properties (depth of humus layer, bulk density, soil texture) and chemical properties (pH, electrical conductivity (EC), organic carbon, and nutrients (N, P, and K) of the collected samples were measured. Depth of soil humus layer was varied from 0.6 to 2.5 cm and only 4% sampling points possessed the humus layer. Comparatively (p