Impact of Agricultural Tarping on Environmental Variables

Data associated with manuscript: Differing short-term impacts of agricultural tarping on soil-dwelling and surface-active arthropods by Kinnebrew et al. 2023, <em>Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment</em>. DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2023.108542 This dataset details the environmental variables (soil moisture, weeds, and soil temperature) measured during the experiment. <br> <strong>Column name descriptions for EnvironmentalVariables_KinnebrewTarps.csv:</strong> <br> 1. Date: Date of measurement 2. Sampling: The time period in which measurement occurred. Tarps on: during tarping; Tarps off 1w: 1 week after tarp removal; Tarps off 3w: 3 weeks after tarp removal; Tarps off 5w: 5 weeks after tarp removal 3. Farm: The location of the plot – the three farms sampled at included Diggers’, Intervale Community Farm (ICF), and Catamount Farm (all located in Chittenden County, Vermont, USA) 4. Treatment: The type of tarp treatment applied. SilageTarp: silage (black plastic) tarp; ClearPlastic: clear plastic tarp; Control: no tarp 5. PlotName: Unique plot identifier; the first three digits represent the farm on which the plot was located (ICF: ICF, Dig: Diggers’ Farm, Cat: Catamount Farm), the fourth digit represents the treatment (P: clear plastic, S: silage tarp, C: control), and the fifth digit represents the replicate number (1-6) 6. SoilMoistureAverage: Soil moisture, measured as volumetric soil water content %. Three points were taken in each plot and averaged to yield this number. 7. WeedRich: Number of weed species present 8. WeedShannon: Shannon’s diversity of weed community 9. WeedCoverage: Total weed coverage (summed from cover of each individual weed species’ cover) 10. TempmeanB: Mean temperature (in Celsius) during tarping, 10 cm below the soil surface 11. TempmeanT: Mean temperature (in Celsius) during tarping, 1 cm below the soil surface 12. TempmaxB: Max temperature (in Celsius) during tarping, 10 cm below the soil surface 13. TempmaxT: Max temperature (in Celsius) during tarping, 1 cm below the soil surface