Litter manipulation experiment Grinderwald - Density fractionation data from soil core samples

We conducted a litter manipulation experiment with 13C enriched beech litter at the Grinderwald research site, 40 km north of Hannover, Germany. The study site contains a more than 100 years old beech forest on a Dystric Cambisol. At 2 time points (11.2016, 05.2018), we took soil cores down to 180 cm soil depth and divided them in 15 depth increments. We conducted density fractionation from chosen depth increments (0-50 cm, 100-140 cm soil depth) and analyzed the organic carbon distribution in different organic matter fractions, carbon contents in addition to their 13C isotopy and the recovered labeled litter-derived C. Research domain: Soil Sciences Research question: We studied the contribution of litter-derived carbon (C) in the formation of subsoil organic matter (OM).