Microbial Strategies in Biocrusts Under Altered Snow Depth, 1-11 Year Experiment

A dataset from a field snow-manipulation experiment comparing the effects of snow removal, natural snow, and double-snow treatments on soil multifunctionality in cyanobacterial and lichen crusts. The data includes measurements across treatment durations of 1, 8, and 11 years, exploring microbial life-history strategies as mechanisms. The dataset was authored by qing zhang and last updated on 2026-06-03.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between snow depth and soil multifunctionality based on long-term experimental treatments.
• Analyzing microbial life-history strategies (e.g., high yield vs. resource acquisition) as predictors of ecosystem function.
• Comparing the resilience and recovery trajectories of cyanobacterial versus lichen crusts under climate perturbations.
• Investigating the shifting influence of soil physicochemical properties versus microbial strategies over an 11-year period.

Strengths

• Data originates from a controlled, long-term field experiment with treatments spanning 1, 8, and 11 years.
• Explicitly compares two distinct biocrust types (cyanobacterial and lichen crusts) under three snow-depth conditions.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license for reuse.

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 is small (125.1 KB), indicating a limited scope or aggregated summary data.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Field snow-manipulation experiment with snow removal, natural snow, and double-snow treatments.

Time Range

Experimental data spans treatment durations of 1, 8, and 11 years.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-03 03:45:55; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Likely a desert ecosystem, though the specific location is not stated.