Soil Properties and Vegetation Survey Data in the Tarim River, China

This study was conducted in a desert riparian forest ecosystem in the lower reaches of the Tarim River, China. The region is characterized by extremely low precipitation, high potential evaporation, coarse-textured soils and pronounced salinization–alkalization, representing a typical hyper-arid riparian ecosystem. Populus euphratica seedlings represent an early stage of natural regeneration and community recovery in desert riparian forests. Therefore, this study focused on the root zone of P. euphratica seedlings and included both sexually  and clonal , reflecting the two major regeneration pathways of P. euphratica populations. To simulate floodwater use practices such as ecological water conveyance, flood diversion and artificial overflow in arid regions, a four-year flood-type irrigation pulse experiment was established. The experiment included one non-irrigated control and three flood-type irrigation pulse treatments. The non-irrigated control represented a persistent drought condition, whereas the three irrigation treatments represented low, moderate and high flood-pulse inputs. Differences in irrigation amount, irrigation frequency and irrigation interval generated a gradient of increasing flood-pulse intensity and rhythm. It should be noted that this experiment did not fully reproduce the complex processes associated with natural flooding, such as sediment deposition, hydrodynamic erosion, solute input and prolonged inundation. Instead, it focused on the most directly manageable components of floodwater use, namely water input amount, irrigation frequency and pulse interval.