Microbial biomass and water-extractable carbon on Mt. Kilimanjaro

This dataset presents the value of microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and water-extractable carbon (WOC) at study plots under KiLi project.

Microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and water-extractable organic carbon (WOC) – as sensitive and important parameters for soil fertility and C turnover – are strongly affected by land-use changes all over the world. These effects are particularly distinct upon conversion of natural to agricultural ecosystems due to very fast carbon (C) and nutrient cycles and high vulnerability, especially in the tropics. The objective of this study was to use the unique advantage of Mt. Kilimanjaro – altitudinal gradient leading to different tropical ecosystems but developed all on the same soil parent material – to investigate the effects of land-use change and elevation on MBC and WOC contents during a transition phase from dry to wet season. Down to a soil depth of 50 cm, we compared MBC and WOC contents of 2 natural (Ocotea and Podocarpus forest), 3 seminatural (lower montane forest, grassland, savannah), 1 sustainably used (homegarden) and 2 intensively used (maize field, coffee plantation) ecosystems on an elevation gradient from 950 to 2850 m a.s.l.

The KiLi project (2010-2018) is a German Science Foundation (DFG) funded research unit (DFG research unit FOR1246) that focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem processes along altitudinal and disturbance gradients on Mt. Kilimanjaro (Tanzania, Africa), capitalizing on its world-wide unique range of climatic and vegetation zones. The research unit comprises 2 central projects and 7 subprojects from various disciplines. On a total of 60 study sites in both natural and human-disturbed ecosystems biodiversity (e.g. plants, soil arthropods, ants, bees, frogs, lizards, bats, birds), related ecosystem processes (decomposition, seed dispersal, pollination, herbivory, predation), and biogeochemical processes and properties of ecosystems (climate, soil properties and nutrient status, regulation of water and carbon fluxes, trace gas emissions, primary productivity, functional diversity) are analyzed.