Data for: The chemical and physical stability of soil organic carbon in the top 1 m of the soil profile under different land uses in England

Soil samples were collected in August 2017 from deciduous woodland, permanent grassland and long term arable sites at three separate locations within the Loddon Catchment, a tributary of River Thames in the UK. Five soil samples were collected from every site using a gouge auger, adopting a stratified random sampling strategy. Each core was sampled down to 1 m depth and divided into 10 cm segments. Samples were then bulked into one composite soil sample for each 10 cm depth per site. Therefore, every site yielded 10 composite soil samples (0-10 cm, 10-20 cm, 20-30 cm, 30-40 cm, 40-50 cm, 50-60 cm, 60-70 cm, 70-80 cm, 80-90 cm, and 90-100 cm). With three different land uses and three locations, 90 composite samples were collected overall. Soils were air dried and sieved to <2 mm prior to analysis for texture, total C, total N, pH, ammonium oxalate extractable Al, Fe and Mn, and a physical fractionation method based on doi.org/10.1002/clen.201100338 that yielded the following four fractions; free light particulate organic matter (fPOM), intra macroaggregate organic matter (iMacro), intra micro-aggregate organic matter (iMicro) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MinOC).