Flower strip data Germany 2021

The data concerns 23 flower strips, sampled in 2019 in Germany. In all files, "Location" is the ID of the flower strips. 

The file "FlowerStripInformation" contains data regarding the sampled flower strips, including soil properties (sand, silt, clay weight%), pH, age of the flower strip (age; years since establishment), aboveground C input (AGC; estimated from measured aboveground biomass, Mg C/ha) belowround C input (BGC; estimated from measured belowground biomass, Mg C/ha), calculated root exudates (Exudates; 0.33*BGC, Mg C/ha), and the total belowground C input (BGC_tot, Mg C/ha), and the total C input from the flower strips (TotC, Mg C/ha). Coordinates for each flower strip is also available in UTM32 and lat/lon degrees. 

The file "FlowerStripClimate" contains monthly information about the mean temperature (temp, deg. C), total precipitation (precip, mm) and sunshine duration from the climate station closest to each of the sampled flower strips. 

The file "FlowerStripSOCstock" contains the calculated SOC stock of each flower strip and adjacent cropland for 0-10 cm, 10-30 cm and 0-30 cm. The equal soil mass-corrected mass of each layer (Mass; Mg/ha), SOC stock (SOC; Mg C/ha), total N (TN; Mg N/ha) and corresponding C:N ratio (CN, unitless) is available. 

The file "FlowerStripSpeciesCount" contains the count and ground cover of the observed species in the 23 flower strips. Five plots of 0.5 x 0.5 m (0.25 m2 area) were sampled at each flower strip location. The species name is given in German (Species_DE). The mean count of each species across the five plots in given in Count_mean, and the ground cover (5) is given in Cover_percent. The a sum of Cover_percent can be greater than 100 due to rounding. If the sum is less than 100, the remaining area was bare soil.