Soil Fauna Biodiversity in Alley-Cropping vs. Sole-Cropping Systems at Five UK Farms

Five commercial farms in England, United Kingdom, provide the context for this dataset on soil meso- and macrofaunal biodiversity. The data, collected by author Beth Evans, likely contains measurements of abundance, taxonomic richness, soil biological quality, and community composition. It was last updated on 2026-04-26 and is associated with a detailed journal article.

Use Cases

• Compare soil biological quality metrics between alley-cropping and sole-cropping systems based on the described paired-site investigation.
• Analyze the relationship between farming system and soil faunal abundance and taxonomic richness as mentioned in the description.
• Model the impact of agroforestry integration on soil biodiversity composition at the farm scale.
• Assess the potential of alley-cropping for enhancing soil ecosystem services in arable land.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from five distinct commercial farms, providing real-world agricultural context.
• The dataset is explicitly linked to a peer-reviewed journal article for methodological and analytical details.
• File size of 122.0 KB suggests a focused, manageable dataset for initial analysis.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset's small size (122.0 KB) indicates a limited scope, likely covering a specific study rather than a broad survey.

Provenance

Source

Beth Evans, via figshare.

Collection Method

Investigation of paired alley-cropping and sole-cropping systems, likely involving field sampling.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-26 17:36:15; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Five commercial farms in England, United Kingdom.