Data from: Reindeer control over subarctic treeline alters soil fungal communities with potential consequences for soil carbon storage

Here we present the data and R script from "Reindeer control over subarctic treeline alters soil fungal communities with potential consequences for soil carbon storage" by Henni Ylänne, Rieke L. Madsen, Carles Castaño, Daniel B. Metcalfe and Karina E. Clemmensen (Global Change Biology, 2021). In this study we reported the impacts of grazing regime and mountain birch vicinity on the abundance, diversity and community composition of the soil fungal community, and explored how the soil fungal communities relate to vegetation and, ultimately, to the observed variation in soil carbon stocks. The study was conducted at a treeline ecotone in northern Fennoscandia, where two adjacent 65-year-old grazing regimes with or without summer grazing by reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) could be compared. As these grazing regimes differ in the abundance of mountain birch (Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovii), the own effects of mountain birch vicinity on the fungal communities were assessed by collecting soil samples directly underneath and > 3 m away from mountain birches.

This dataset includes data of soil properties, soil carbon and nitrogen stocks, vegetation community composition (as deterred from plant reads captured by the high-throughput sequencing of ITS2 region), fungal abundance (ITS2 copy numbers), fungal diversity and the taxonomic and functional composition of the soil fungal communities.