Multi-site, multi-crop measurements in the soil–vegetation–atmosphere continuum: a comprehensive dataset from two climatically contrasting regions in southwestern Germany for the period 2009–2018

We present a comprehensive, high-quality dataset characterizing soil-vegetation and land surface processes from continuous measurements conducted in two climatically contrasting study regions in southwestern Germany: the warmer and drier Kraichgau region with a mean temperature of 9.7 .sup." C and annual precipitation of 890 mm and the cooler and wetter Swabian Alb with mean temperature 7.5 .sup." C and annual precipitation of 1042 mm. In each region, measurements were conducted over a time period of nine cropping seasons from 2009 to 2018. The backbone of the investigation was formed by six eddy-covariance (EC) stations which measured fluxes of water, energy and carbon dioxide between the land surface and the atmosphere at half-hourly resolution. This resulted in a dataset containing measurements from a total of 54 site years containing observations with a multitude of crops, as well as considerable variation in local growing-season climates.