A global metadata of the influence of cover crops on key soil hydraulic properties.

This dataset provides a global metadata of field studies investigating the influence of cover crops (CCs) on six soil key hydraulic properties, namely, total porosity, infiltration rate, saturated hydraulic conductivity, water retention at field capacity and permanent wilting point, and available water holding capacity. The dataset contains 1007 pairwise observations (CC vs. no‑CC) from 146 peer‑reviewed field studies along with their bibliographic, geographic (country, continent, latitude, longitude, Köppen–Geiger climate), soil (texture, bulk density, soil organic carbon), climate (mean annual precipitation, mean annual temperature), and management variables (cover crop species and functional group, cash crop, crop rotation, tillage, cover crop biomass at termination, termination method, residue fate, years of cover cropping). Continuous response variables are standardized to common units and categorical variables are harmonized into defined classes. The full description and methodological details of the dataset is provided in the associated Data in Brief article “A global metadata of the influence of cover crops on key soil hydraulic properties”