Soil Microbial and Nitrate Data from Sugarcane vs. Melaleuca Floodplain Plots, 2022

30 experimental plots in North Queensland, Australia, compare nitrate leaching and soil microbial communities between sugarcane and restored Melaleuca forest. Adam Canning's dataset includes raw amplicon sequence variant tables for bacteria, fungi, and nematodes, alongside soil chemistry and treatment metadata from a 2022 field experiment. The data supports a 2026 publication in Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

Use Cases

• Modeling nitrate leaching responses to fertilizer application rates based on the five tested N levels.
• Comparing soil microbial assemblage structure between agricultural and restored forest vegetation types.
• Analyzing correlations between soil chemistry parameters and amplicon sequence variant (ASV) counts for different taxonomic groups.

Strengths

• Includes raw, non-normalized amplicon sequence variant count tables for three organism groups (bacteria, fungi, nematodes).
• Covers a controlled field experiment with five nitrate application rates (0–100 kg N/ha) and pre/post sampling.
• Provides separate taxonomy tables and a sample metadata sheet with column explanations.

Limitations

• Row counts for sequence and sample tables are unknown, limiting scale assessment.
• Column-level documentation for the core data sheets (ASV_bacteria, etc.) is absent; semantics must be inferred.
• The 4.6 MB size suggests a relatively small dataset, which may limit statistical power for some analyses.

Provenance

Source

Adam Canning, associated with a 2026 publication in Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

Collection Method

Field experiment with soil sampling from 4 m × 4 m plots before and six weeks after nitrate application.

Time Range

November–December 2022.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-02 13:41:56.

Geography

Floodplain land in North Queensland, Australia.