Grassland restoration: nematodes and plant communities
Datasets
This dataset contains all data on which the following publication below is based. Paper Citation: - Resch, M.C., Schütz, M., Graf, U., Wagenaar, R., van der Putten, W.H., Risch, A.C. 2019. Does topsoil removal in grassland restoration benefit both soil nematode and plant communities? Journal of Applied Ecology 56: 1782-1793. Please cite this paper together with the citation for the datafile. Methods Study area and experimental settings The study was conducted in a nature reserve (Eigental: 47° 27’ to 47° 29’ N, 8° 37’ E, 461 to 507 m a.s.l.) that is located on the Swiss Central plateau close to Zurich airport (Canton Zurich, Switzerland). The mean annual temperature in this area ranges from 8.9 to 10.6 °C, mean annual precipitation from 910 to 1260 mm [10-year average (2007-2017); MeteoSchweiz, 2018]. The main soil types are calcaric to gleyic Cambisol and Gleysols. The reserve was established in 1967 to protect small remnants of oligotrophic semi-natural grasslands (roughly 12 ha). The plant community can be characterized as Molinion and Mesobromion (semi-wet to semi-dry), depending on the site-specific groundwater level and slope inclination (Delarze, Gonseth, Eggenberg, & Vus