Tree species controls over nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in a wet tropical forest

Wet tropical forests play an important role in the global carbon (C) cycle, but given current rates of land-use change, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) limitation could reduce productivity in regenerating forests in this biome. Whereas the strong controls of climate and parent material over forest recovery are well known, the influence of vegetation can be difficult to determine. We addressed species-specific differences in plant traits and their relationships to ecosystem properties and processes, relevant to N and P supply to regenerating vegetation in experimental plantations in a single site in lowland wet forest in Costa Rica. Single tree species were planted in a randomized block design, such that climate, soil (Oxisol), and land-use history were similar for all species. In Years 15-25 of the experiment, we measured traits regarding N and P acquisition and use in four native, broad-leaved, evergreen tree species, including differential effects on soil pH, in conjunction with bioma..., How was the data set collected?
We addressed the relationships between tree species and accrual of C, N, and P, using a long-term, replicated field experiment containing four native tree species grown in plantations under similar climate, parent material and land-use history in a tropical wet forest in Costa Rica. Our approach was to identify mechanisms that had two main criteria: (1) the potential to influence availability of N and P for plants, and thus productivity (as indicated by their biomass accumulation) and (2) a direct connection to traits that could differ among species in their attributes, and thus drive species-specific differences in ecosystem properties. We used various approaches to evaluate several mechanisms in relation to specific traits, while also considering that plant species differ in a plethora of traits that could interact to result in a non-significant correlation between a particular mechanism and trait.
Field measurements 
The field experiment was establishe..., , # Tree species controls over nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in a wet tropical forest

Give a brief summary of dataset contents, contextualized in experimental procedures and results.

## Description of the data and file structure

This data set is organized as follows. The first sheet in this Excel file is labeled ‘Metadata’ and this sheet contains information about the data. The Metadata sheet is organized by these columns: Study name; General information; Components; Abbreviations; Description; Frequency/Dates of measurements; Sheet name within this file; and Notes. Each remaining sheet in this Excel file is labeled as per the Metadata column ‘Sheet name within this file’. The sheets include:

* Biomass C,N,P conc
* Biomass CN, CP, NP
* C Budget
* N Budget
* P Budget
* Fine-root biomass
* Surface litter mass
* Soil bulk density
* Soil C
* Soil N
* Soil P
* Litterfall OM
* Litterfall C
* Litterfall N
* Litterfall P
* Branchfall
* Fine-root growth
* ...