Data for "Fresh and degraded maize shoot and root residues temporarily change soil hydraulic properties"

In a laboratory study, we quantified the effect of maize crop residues (CR) in various concentrations (0, 2, and 5 wt.%) on the SHP of a loam soil and additionally measured the SHP of a mulch layer (100 wt.% CR) from saturation to oven dryness. We differentiated between shoot and root CR to quantify the effect of biomass quality and adapted the simplified evaporation method to measure the hydraulic properties of 100% CR layer. The experiments were run in triplicate and repeated after three weeks of incubation under optimal conditions for biological activity (30 °C, 90% RH) to simulate organic matter degradation after harvest. This dataset contains soil hydraulic measurements taken pre and post-incubation.