Inorganic nitrogen, microbial ecoenzymatic activities, and organic matter in soils collected from the Monsoon Rainfall Manipulation Experiment (MRME), Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico during the 2014 growing season

Drylands are characterized by a pulse dynamics framework in which episodic rain events trigger brief pulses of biological activity and resource availability that regulate primary production in these ecosystems. Relatively small rain events can stimulate microbial processes like decomposition that release inorganic nitrogen needed by plant processes, which typically also depend on soil moisture received from larger rain events. Little is known how changes in rainfall patterns may affect plant available nitrogen in dryland soils, particularly across temporal scales. Therefore, we conducted a study to examine the daily and seasonal responses of plant available nitrogen to rain events that differed in size and frequency throughout a summer monsoon in a northern Chihuahuan Desert grassland located in the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, USA. This data package, which accompanies an associated manuscript (Brown et al. 2022), contains measurements of inorganic nitrogen, nitrogen-acquiring microbial ecoenzymatic activities, and organic matter in soils collected from the Monsoon Rainfall Manipulation Experiment (MRME) during the 2014 summer growing season.

旱地（Drylands）生态系统以脉冲动力学框架为典型特征：间歇性降雨事件会触发短暂的生物活性与资源供给脉冲，进而调控该类生态系统的初级生产力。强度相对较小的降雨可激发分解作用等微生物过程，释放植物生理过程所需的无机氮；而植物生理过程通常也依赖于强降雨带来的土壤水分补给。目前学界对降雨格局变化如何影响旱地土壤中植物有效氮的情况仍知之甚少，在时间尺度维度上的相关研究尤为匮乏。为此，我们在美国新墨西哥州塞维利塔国家野生动物保护区内的奇瓦瓦沙漠北部草原开展野外研究，旨在探究2014年夏季季风期内，不同强度与发生频率的降雨事件对植物有效氮的日动态与季节动态响应。本数据包配套相关学术论文（Brown等，2022），收录了2014年夏季生长季期间，从季风降雨调控实验（Monsoon Rainfall Manipulation Experiment, MRME）样地采集的土壤样品中无机氮、氮获取型微生物胞外酶活性以及有机质的测定数据。