General soil fungi from 150 German grassland and 150 German forest plots from 2011, 2014 and 2017 (Illumina MiSeq)

The German Biodiversity Exploratories aim to regularly monitor general fungi in German soils. The project considers 150 grassland and 150 forest plots in total, which are distributed along a north-south transect across Germany. The three sites, each consisting of 50 grassland and 50 forest plots, are Schorfheide-Chorin in Northern Germany, Hainich-Duen in Central Germany and Swabian Alb in the South of the country. Grasslands and forests are characterized by different land-use intensities and management regimes, respectively. The general soil fungi were assessed using Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the internal transcripted spacer2 (ITS2) region after a joint soil sampling carried out in May 2011, 2014 and 2017, each time on all 300 plots.