Soil properties and greenhouse gas fluxes of Prairie Pothole Region wetlands: a comprehensive data release

This data release encompass numerous studies examining soil properties and greenhouse gas fluxes of Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) wetland catchments. The PPR is one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the world, encompassing approximately 770,000 square kilometers of the north-central U.S. and south-central Canada, with the U.S. portion including parts of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana. The data included in this release span a 20-year period and represent a diversity of studies ranging from localized (e.g., wetland complex, single county) to region-wide efforts. The first study was conducted in 1997 while the most recent is ongoing (circa 2017). Although study designs and methodologies differ slightly among the studies, the overarching methods are comparable and allow the data to be combined into a single data release. The data release consists of combined datasets (i.e., all studies) for soils, greenhouse gases, topography, water chemistry, weather, and covariate or explanatory variables such as water depth, soil moisture, and temperature.
The data presented here represent studies that span the PPRs climate and land-use gradient, with study sites ranging from northeast Montana to northwest Iowa. Moreover, wetland catchments encompass a variety of wetland classes ranging from small, ephemerally-ponded wetlands to large, shallow lakes. A majority of the studies also present data from the entire wetland catchment, which includes the surrounding upland contributing area. In general, data were collected from numerous landscape positions along transects spanning from the wetland center to the catchment boundary. Sample frequency among the studies ranges from a single site visit per year, to season-long, biweekly sample events across multiple years. Although the databases differ in terms of data-collection dates, times, frequency (e.g., hourly versus daily), and strata (e.g., soil or water depth, soil versus atmosphere), they all include compatible variables that allow for aggregation and merging.