Soil and microbial growth data with soil depth

Soils were collected from 60 forest sites spanning tropical to boreal regions across China (Fig. 1a), covering a broad climatic gradient in mean annual temperature (MAT; −2.2 to 25.0 °C) and mean annual precipitation (MAP; 98 to 1873 mm). At each site, mineral soils were collected from two discontinuous horizons: topsoil (0–10 cm) and subsoil (35–50 cm). The dataset include site information, climate, edaphic conditions, substrate, microbial properties, as well as microbial growth and respiration rates at different assay temperatures for both topsoil and subsoil soils.