DOI: 10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79s4
title: Data from: Severity of topsoil compaction controls the impact of skid trails on soil ecological processes

description: Skid trails are a major management-induced disturbance in temperate forest
 ecosystems with considerable impact on soil ecological processes that are
 so far poorly understood. In German forests, skid trails comprise 10 – 20
 % of the forest area that is potentially affected by soil compaction
 through heavy machinery. We systematically investigated the influence of
 skid trails on physical, chemical, and microbiological soil parameters at
 84 paired plots across four Central European forest types. In low
 mountain forests with steeper topography, skid trails had more drastic
 effects than in lowland forests. Skid trails in low mountain areas showed
 a decrease in the C to N ratio of microbial biomass (MBC/MBN), as well as
 increased microbial (MBC/SOC) and enzyme activities leading to faster
 carbon turnover (lower C/N, EOC/EN) and increased CO2 losses (CO2/SOC)
 from the soil. The overall effects of the skid trails in lowland
 forests were small. On base-poor soils, we found an increase in the
 MBC/MBN ratio, while skid trails in base-rich lowland soils showed a
 reduction in CO2/SOC, suggesting a proportional increase in soil carbon
 storage. Regardless of region-specific effects, the relative
 increase in the bulk density of the fine soil was identified as a ‘golden
 trait’ that determined the effects of skid trails on many soil parameters,
 as shown by negative correlations with SOC, N, MBC, MBN, MBP, MBC/SOC and
 CO2/SOC and positive ones with the activities of certain hydrolytic
 enzymes. Synthesis and Applications: Our data clearly showed that carbon
 conversion processes and soil respiration leading to significant carbon
 and nutrient losses increased significantly on skid trails in low mountain
 regions with relatively steep slopes, which was in sharp contrast to
 lowland sites. The strong context dependence of our findings suggests that
 the mapping of soil conditions in terms of slope, substrate and moisture
 with high spatial resolution is mandatory to assess the vulnerability of
 sites to soil compaction by heavy machinery. Based on such vulnerability
 analysis, negative impacts can be minimized through the designation of
 permanently fixed skid trails, the technical adaptation of vehicles (e.g.,
 wide base tyres) as well as careful planning and timing of management
 operations that should be restricted to dry weather and soil moisture
 conditions or periods of frost.
description: The data was collected as part of the
 BiCO<sub>2</sub> project, a large-scale study of biodiversity
 and carbon storage along a forestry intensity gradient at four different
 forest sites in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. This partial dataset was
 used to investigate the effects of skid trails on soil ecological
 parameters for the manuscript ‘Severity of topsoil compaction controls the
 impact of skid trails on soil ecological processes’ by Klein-Raufhake et
 al 2024. For Details, see the Method section of the
 related paper, published in Journal of Applied Ecology. 
description: # Severity of topsoil compaction controls the impact of skid trails on
 soil ecological processes
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79s4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79s4) We investigated the soil-ecological differences between skid trails and undisturbed control plots in terms of physical, chemical and soil microbiological parameters with a special focus on nutrient turnover processes. ## Description of the data and file structure The data set consists of metadata on the 84 paired plots (skid trails and control) and the soil ecology parameters of the soil samples from 0-5 cm mineral soil depth measured in the laboratory. All variables occurring in the data set 'skidtrails_mastertab.xlsx' are explained in the table ‘skidtrail_metadata.xlsx’ and listed with units and scale.