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 19-year period (1997–2016) and represent a diversity of studies ranging from localized (e.g., wetland catchments and complexes) to region-wide efforts that span the PPR’s climate and land-use gradient. Data from individual wetland catchments encompass a variety of wetland classes ranging from small, ephemerally-ponded wetlands to large, shallow lakes. 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. A majority of the studies also present data from the entire wetland catchment, with data 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.