White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) exclusion shifts soil carbon dynamics in mature oak-dominated and hemlock-dominated forest stands

While the direct effects of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) on vegetation have been intensively studied, less is known about the indirect and interactive effects of herbivory on lower trophic levels, such as soil microbes and their processing of carbon pools. We explored how carbon dynamics shift with release from over-browsing by white-tailed deer in two mature stands of oak and hemlock trees. We measured soil carbon pools (e.g., soil organic matter, carbon stocks, litter biomass, and litter stabilization) and fluxes (e.g., soil respiration, methane uptake, microbial substrate use, and litter decomposition) using a spatially balanced survey design inside and outside two 24-year-old deer exclosures, one in each forest stand. Soil carbon pools were higher inside the exclosures than in deer-browsed plots in both forest stands, but the effect of deer herbivory on fine-scale spatial patterning of soil carbon pools and mean carbon fluxes varied by forest type. Release from deer he..., The attached files contain data collected inside and outside two deer exclosures at Lacawac Sanctuary in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, USA. Exclosures were established in 1995 in a mature oak-dominated stand and a mature hemlock-dominated stand. These data were used for all analyses (e.g., differences in spatial resource distribution and mean-stand level differences) conducted in the publication, “White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) exclusion shifts soil carbon dynamics in mature oak-dominated and hemlock-dominated forest stands.” Files include leaf area index measurements collected in 1997, 2014, and 2023, vegetation surveys and carbon pool and flux data collected between 2019 and 2024, and microbial community profiling data (i.e., average well-color development at 72 hours and intrinsic rate of increase) collected in 2019. A separate metadata file containing a description of each data column is included for each dataset. Please see the publication for more details., , # Data from: White-tailed deer (*Odocoileus virginianus*) exclusion shifts soil carbon dynamics in mature oak-dominated and hemlock-dominated forest stands

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qmk](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qmk)

## Description of the data and file structure

A spatially balanced survey design was used to collect vegetation survey data and carbon pools (*e.g.*, soil organic matter, carbon stocks, litter biomass, and litter stabilization) and fluxes (*e.g.*, soil respiration, methane uptake, microbial substrate use, and litter decomposition) inside and outside two long-term deer exclosures (i.e., four plots). One exclosure was positioned in a mature oak-dominated stand. The other was positioned in a mature hemlock-dominated stand. 

### Files and variables

#### Folder: Moon\_et\_al\_2025\_Ecosystems.zip

**Description:** This zip folder contains four .csv datasets with complimentary metadata .csv files. Metadata files include a list of all headers with units ...