Multi-site, multi-crop measurements in the soil–vegetation–atmosphere continuum: a comprehensive dataset from two climatically contrasting regions in southwestern Germany for the period 2009–2018

Abstract

We present a comprehensive, high-quality dataset characterizing soil–vegetation and land surface processes from continuous measurements conducted in two climatically contrasting study regions in southwestern Germany: the warmer and drier Kraichgau region with a mean temperature of 9.7 ∘C and annual precipitation of 890 mm and the cooler and wetter Swabian Alb with mean temperature 7.5 ∘C and annual precipitation of 1042 mm. In each region, measurements were conducted over a time period of nine cropping seasons from 2009 to 2018. The backbone of the investigation was formed by six eddy-covariance (EC) stations which measured fluxes of water, energy and carbon dioxide between the land surface and the atmosphere at half-hourly resolution. This resulted in a dataset containing measurements from a total of 54 site years containing observations with a multitude of crops, as well as considerable variation in local growing-season climates. The presented multi-site, multi-year dataset is composed of crop-related data on phenological development stages, canopy height, leaf area index, vegetative and generative biomass, and their respective carbon and nitrogen content. Time series of soil temperature and soil water content were monitored with 30 min resolution at various points in the soil profile, including ground heat fluxes. Moreover, more than 1200 soil samples were taken to study changes of carbon and nitrogen contents. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.20387/bonares-a0qc-46jc (Weber et al., 2021). One field in each region is still fully set up as continuous observatories for state variables and fluxes in intensively managed agricultural fields.