Tumbleweed litter acts as a potential compensatory pathway for soil nutrient recovery
Description
This dataset contains the data supporting the study entitled "Tumbleweed litter acts as a compensatory pathway for soil nutrient recovery in degraded grasslands". The dataset includes long-term litter decomposition data collected from a temperate steppe ecosystem under different grazing intensities. We investigated whether litter inputs from dominant grass species and tumbleweed species could promote soil nutrient recovery during ecosystem degradation. Aboveground litter of Leymus chinensis and three tumbleweed species (Cleistogenes squarrosa, Saposhnikovia divaricata, and Chenopodium aristatum) was incubated using the litterbag method for 717 days under four grazing intensity treatments, including non-grazing, light grazing, moderate grazing, and heavy grazing. The dataset includes litter mass remaining, decomposition rate constants, litter carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, lignin, and cellulose dynamics, soil nutrient recovery indicators, microbial resource limitation indices, and associated environmental va