Seasonal Soil Sampling of Grass-dominated, Mesquite-dominated, and Ecotone Sites at the Jornada Basin LTER site for the Analysis of Microbial Community Variance, 2022-2023

Fungal and bacterial soil communities were analyzed to assess the influence of woody shrub encroachment on soil microbial communities. Three study sites in the Jornada Long Term Ecological Research Site were selected to represent a grass-dominated site, a woody shrub dominated site, and an ecotone of woody shrubs and grass. The field sampling began in October 2022 and concluded in July 2023 with five sampling periods that aimed to capture seasonal variation: October 2022, January 2023, March 2023, May 2023, and July 2023. This dataset includes data pertaining to the soil microbial composition, environmental characteristics, microbial sequence processing, and documentation of the code utilized for data processing and statistical analyses. Data on soil microbial composition was collected from Phospholipid Fatty-Acid composition data from soil samples. Data on environmental characteristics were collected from on-site temperature probes, laboratory assessments of soil properties, and Jornada meteorological stations. Information pertaining to microbial sequence processing is included in the documented code as well as in the record of the primers utilized.