Reciprocal litter decomposition reveals contrasting responses of soil carbon pools under home and away conditions

This dataset contains the data and analysis materials supporting an 18-month reciprocal litter decomposition experiment conducted in two forest stands in the Zhongtiao Mountains, China, under biodiversity-oriented forest management (BFM) and unmanaged control (CK) scenarios. The dataset includes pre-decomposition soil physicochemical properties, initial litter chemistry, litter mass remaining and structural compound dynamics during decomposition, beneath-litterbag soil carbon pools (SOC, DOC, EOC, POC, MAOC, and MBC), carbon-cycling enzyme activities, fungal community-derived data, and the datasets used for PERMANOVA, correlation, Mantel, redundancy analysis, variation partitioning, and standardized regression analyses. A README file provides definitions of variables, units, experimental treatments, sample identifiers, and file organization.