Dataset relating soil organic content and caesium-137 activities in the Houay Pano catchment of northern Laos over 42 years (1963-2015)

This dataset has been collected thanks to the long-term partnership with Department of Agricultural Land Management (DALaM), Lao PDR, which granted the permission for field access, and to the financial, scientific, technical, and/or logistical support of the Multiscale TROPIcal CatchmentS (SNO M-TROPICS; https://mtropics.obs-mip.fr/) critical zone observatory (previously MSEC). The soil samples were taken at different soil depths and under different vegetation covers at the long-term observatory catchment of Houay Pano in Northern Laos between 2000 and 2005. The dataset holds some general soil properties: bulk dry density (cylinder method), total organic carbon concentration (TOC), total nitrogen concentration (TN), 13C/12C and 15N/14N isotope ratios determined by EA-IRMS (dry combustion), radionuclide 137Cs and 210Pbxs activities and Potassium concentration (K) were measured by gamma-ray spectrometry. Soil elemental and isotopic analyses were carried out at iEES Paris laboratory. Radionuclides activities were measured at Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l‘Environnement (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette. The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), of the the French INSU project PNSE 12, and of the FFEM-AFD program