Soil organic matter, tree communities, and fungal communities across mycorrhizal gradients in the Eastern United States
- Dartmouth College; Dartmouth College
- University of Georgia
- University of Wisconsin - Madison
- Dartmouth College
- North Carolina State University
We collected these data to investigate how mycorrhizal associations are related to soil C and N across four sites in the eastern U.S. broadleaf forest biome, which capture broad variability in climate and tree species. Our sites represented each of the four ecoregions in the eastern United States temperate forest—warm continental (New Hampshire), hot continental (Wisconsin), Prairie (Illinios), and subtropical (Georgia). This breadth naturally provided tree species diversity and allowed us to also investigate how soil C and N are related to canopy tree and EcM fungal community composition. Specifically, we analyzed the effects of mycorrhizal association, canopy tree family, and EcM fungal taxa on the proportion of C and N associated with soil minerals (MAOM) and bulk soil C:N. These are plot level data from forests in New Hampshire, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Illinois. The plots are 10 m in radius and vary across gradients of ectomycorrhizal tree basal area. Within each plot, data include the basal area of all trees >2 cm in diameter identified to species, the abundance of different fungal taxa based on ITS sequences, and the %C, %N, C:N of bulk soil and of soil density fractions (free light, occluded light, and particulate) as well as the proportion of soil C and N within each fraction. The soil data (both organic matter and fungal communities) are from the top 10 cm of the mineral soil. This also includes a meta-analysis of leaf litter k and C:N values for the tree species present in the forests.The "Tree_BA_ALL.csv" files include the basal area of all trees >2 cm in diameter at breast height within our 10 cm radii plots. The "Soil_Data_Final.csv" file contains the soil carbon and nitrogen in bulk and density fractions (concentrations as well as proportion for free light fraction (fLF), occluded light fraction (oLF), and heavy or dense fraction (HF), oxalate extractable iron and aluminum concentrations, as well as the geographic coordinates of each plot's location. The "FungiNonRelative.csv" file contains the abundances of fungal taxa identified via ITS sequencing for each plot (with the exception of 4 plots from GA where there was not enough quality DNA to extract).The "R_ReadyK.csv" and "R_Ready_CN.csv" files contain leaf litter decomposition constant (k) and C:N values from the literature for the tree species found at our sites.
- Research Organization:
- Environmental System Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem; Testing mechanisms of how mycorrhizal associations affect forest soil carbon and nitrogen cycling
- Sponsoring Organization:
- U.S. DOE > Office of Science > Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI ID:
- 1894515
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Tree Communities Have Greater Soil Fungal Diversity and Relative Abundances of Saprotrophs and Pathogens than Ectomycorrhizal Tree Communities
Related Subjects
EARTH SCIENCE > AGRICULTURE > FOREST SCIENCE
EARTH SCIENCE > LAND SURFACE > SOILS
ITS sequences
basal area
carbon
density fractionation
forests
heavy fraction
light fraction
mycorrhizae
nitrogen
occluded fraction
oxalate-extractable Fe and Al
particulate carbon
soil carbon
soil fungi
soil nitrogen