Contrasting responses of soil organic carbon and functional fractions across forest modification pathways: A meta-analysis

This dataset supports the study “Contrasting responses of soil organic carbon and functional fractions across forest modification pathways: A meta-analysis.” It contains the standardized records used to evaluate changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) quantity and functional fractions across contrasting forest modification pathways. The main-analysis dataset includes 799 effect sizes from 50 independent field studies, with an additional 209 effect sizes retained for sensitivity analyses. The dataset includes bibliographic and site information, forest modification pathways, treatment and reference conditions, soil depth, SOC response variables and functional classes, sample means, measures of variability, sample sizes, logarithmic response ratios, sampling variances, and data-quality fields. Forest modification pathways include plantation replacement, restoration or stand-age sequences, urbanization gradients, forest conversion or degradation, mixed or agroforestry systems, and other human modifications. The deposited files also include pooled model summaries, pathway- and functional-class estimates, study-by-comparison data for exploratory quantity–fraction correlations, sensitivity-analysis results, leave-one-study diagnostics, Egger-test results, and the R script used to reproduce the submitted figures. The data and code are provided to support transparency, verification, reuse, and future quantitative syntheses of forest soil carbon responses.