Grazing Effects on Steppe Ecosystems in Inner Mongolia with Biomass and Soil Data

Plot-level data from a long-term rotational grazing experiment established in 2013 in Inner Mongolia. The dataset includes measurements of aboveground and belowground biomass, soil nutrients, microbial activity, and plant functional traits collected between 2020 and 2024. It was authored by hangyu Li and published under a CC-BY-4.0 license on figshare.

Use Cases

• Model the relationship between grazing intensity and plant biomass based on the described four grazing treatments.
• Analyze the stability of steppe ecosystems based on community-weighted mean traits and species asynchrony metrics.
• Assess soil health under different grazing pressures based on measurements of soil nutrients, microbial biomass, and enzyme activities.
• Study the correlation between plant functional diversity and ecosystem productivity based on the plot-level community metrics.

Strengths

• Data originates from a long-term experiment with treatments initiated in 2014, providing a multi-year context.
• Includes three replicates for each of the four distinct grazing intensity treatments.
• Combines biological measurements (biomass, traits) with soil and microbial data, as described in the separate tables.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download from a separate variable dictionary file.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Collected from a controlled, long-term rotational grazing experiment with defined plot sizes and sampling protocols.

Time Range

Experimental treatments began in 2014; specific biomass and soil sampling occurred in 2020, 2023, and 2024.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-16 14:08:22.

Geography

Typical steppe ecosystems in Inner Mongolia.