Degradation by brown rot fungi increases the hygroscopicity of heat-treated wood

This dataset contains measurement data from the following publication: Belt, T.; Altgen, M.; Awais, M.; Nopens, M.; Rautkari, L. (2023) Degradation by brown rot fungi increases the hygroscopicity of heat-treated wood. International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation, 186:105690. DOI:10.1016/j.ibiod.2023.105690. Scots pine sapwood samples were heat-treated under superheated steam and then exposed to brown rot decay by Coniophora puteana and Rhodonia placenta in a stacked-sample decay test, after which a subset of samples was selected for sorption isotherm measurements and near infrared (NIR) imaging. Further details on the experimental procedures can be found in the publication. 

The "Sample IDs and mass data.csv" -file contains the sample IDs and all measured mass data for every sample. Masses m0, m1, m2, and m3 are the masses of the samples in the dry state before modification, in the dry state after modification and leaching, in the wet state at the end of the decay test, and in the dry state after the decay test, respectively.

The "Sorption measurements_C puteana.xlsx" and "Sorption measurements_R placenta.xlsx" files contain the sorption measurement data collected from samples degraded by C. puteana and R. placenta, respectively. Each tab in the files shows the mass data recorded for a given sample over the sorption measurement sequence. 

The "NIR spectra.csv" -file contains the unprocessed average NIR spectra extracted from the NIR images. Details on the extraction of average spectra from the images can be found in the publication.