Soil data for a vegetation gradient located at Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Site, interior Alaska

Abstract

First posted July 28, 2016 For additional information, contact: Contact Information Soil Carbon Research - Menlo Park U.S. Geological Survey 345 Middlefield Road, MS 962 Menlo Park, CA 94025 http://carbon.wr.usgs.gov/ http://carbon.wr.usgs.gov/people.html Boreal soils play an important role in the global carbon cycle owing to the large amount of carbon stored within this northern region. To understand how carbon and nitrogen storage varied among different ecosystems, a vegetation gradient was established in the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, located in interior Alaska. The ecosystems represented are a black spruce (Picea mariana)–feather moss (for example, Hylocomium sp.) forest ecosystem, a shrub-dominated ecosystem, a tussock-grass-dominated ecosystem, a sedge-dominated ecosystem, and a rich fen ecosystem. Here, we report the physical, chemical, and descriptive properties for the soil cores collected at these sites. These data have been used to calculate carbon and nitrogen accumulation rates on a long-term (decadal and century) basis (Manies and others, in press).