Louisiana Wetland Soil Properties Across Salinity Gradient

NASA's Delta-X project provides soil core sample properties from herbaceous wetlands in Louisiana's Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins. The dataset covers six sites sampled in spring and summer 2021, measuring bulk density, organic matter, and densities of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, along with 13C and 15N isotopic signatures. Data collection was designed to represent a freshwater-to-saline gradient and aligns with the Coastwide Reference Monitoring System.

Use Cases

• Modeling wetland carbon stocks and sequestration potential using bulk density and total carbon density columns.
• Analyzing nutrient ratios and cycling in coastal soils using nitrogen and phosphorus density data.
• Tracing organic matter sources and decomposition pathways via 13C and 15N isotopic signatures.
• Assessing soil quality and structure across salinity gradients with bulk density and organic matter content.
• Calibrating remote sensing or ecological models with ground-truthed soil data from CRMS-adjacent sites.

Strengths

• Data collection covers a deliberate salinity gradient across six sites, enabling comparative analysis.
• Samples are temporally focused with two distinct sampling campaigns in March-April and August 2021.
• Five of six sites are adjacent to established Coastwide Reference Monitoring System stations, aiding data integration.

Limitations

• Exact row count and column names are unspecified across all platform sources.
• Platforms conflict on the last update date, with datagov listing 2026-03-13 and nasa_earthdata listing 2021-08-19.
• The dataset's license is noted as 'other-license-specified' without further detail.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Field measurements of soil core samples from six wetland sites.

Time Range

2021-03-21 to 2021-08-19

Freshness

2026-03-13 03:16:54.855810

Geography

Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins, southeastern coastal Louisiana, USA.