Readme for: data from "The importance of marshes providing soil stabilization to resist fast-flow erosion in case of a dike breach"

Authors:
Marin-Diaz, B (Beatriz)
Govers, L. L. (Laura)
van der Wal, D. (Daphne)
Olff, H. (Han)
Bouma, T. J. (Tjeerd)

Coresponding author: Marin-Diaz, B (b.marindiaz@ufl.edu)

**General information**

MarinDiaz et al code.r includes the scripts in R utilised for the analysis of the manuscript "The importance of marshes providing soil stabilization to resist fast-flow erosion in case of a dike breach"
The aim was to quantify the topsoil erosion resistance from marshes and bare tidal flats with different soil types to understand the extent to which they can help reduce breach depth in case of a dike breach during a storm. Intact soil samples were collected from eleven locations in the Netherlands at different tidal elevations and then exposed for three hours to 2.3 m s-1 currents in a flow flume. The topsoil erosion was measured for each sample. The dataset includes 1) a file with the belowground vegetation properties, sediment properties and erosion values for each soil sample; 2) a file with soil stability data from artificial cracks made in some of the samples at the end of the topsoil erosion experiment; and 3) the code for the data analysis in R.


***The inputs for the R script are***

MarinDiaz et al data_variables.csv contains all the soil and vegetation variables and the topsoil erosion values. 

site		Locations where the soil samples where collected
code		first letter indicate the site and the number indicates the number of the 		sample, starting with the number 1 next to the dike, until the  mudflat 
Elevation	Elevation of the soil where each sample was collected (m NAP)
spp		Dominant vegetation species in the sample
Treatment	classification of the samples in habitat type
zone		classification by marsh zone (high marsh, low marsh, pioneer marsh, mudflat)
sandlayer	presence of sandy subsoil
elev		marsh elevation (low= low marsh, high=high marsh)
grazing		type of grazing in the site
orchestia	presence/absence of Orchestia (0=absent, 1 =present). Orchestia is a bioturbator.
clay		depth of the cohesive top layer (cm)
erosion0	erosion depth (cm) calculated with the pin profiler at time 0 (previous to flow exposure)
erosion01	erosion depth (cm) calculated with the pin profiler after 10 minutes of flow exposure
erosion1	erosion depth (cm) calculated with the pin profiler after 1 hour of flow exposure
erosion2	erosion depth (cm) calculated with the pin profiler after 2 hours of flow exposure
erosion3	erosion depth (cm) calculated with the pin profiler after 3 hours of flow exposure
compact		values for the soil deformation test (cm)
BulkL1		Bulk density (g cm-3) from the top layer (0-5 cm depth)
SWCL1		Soil water content (%) from the top layer (0-5 cm depth)
OCL1NoCoarse	Soil organic content (%) from the top layer (0-5 cm depth) excluding large detritus
OCL1YesCoarse	Soil organic content (%) from the top layer (0-5 cm depth) including large detritus
L1Silt		silt % from the top layer (0-5 cm depth)
L1SD50		mean grain size (um) from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth)
BulkL3		Bulk density (g cm-3) from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth)
SWCL3		Soil water content (%) from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth)
OCL3NoCoarse	Soil organic content (%) from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth) excluding large detritus
OCL3YesCoarse	Soil organic content (%) from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth) including large detritus
L3Silt		silt % from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth)
L3SD50		mean grain size (um) from the bottom layer (5-20 cm depth)
RootDiam	mean root diameter (mm)
SDrootdiam	standard deviation root diameter (mm)
RhizDiam	mean rhizome diameter (mm)
SDrhizdiam	standard deviation rhizome diameter (mm)
RLD		root length density (cm/cm-3)
RhizLD		rhizome length density (cm/cm-3)
totalrootdensity (g cm-3)
RhizDensity	Rhizome density (g cm-3)
coarserootdensity coarse root density (g cm-3)
finerootdensity	fine root density (g cm-3)
TotalBGB	total vegetation belowgroun biomass (g/m-2)
binom_erosion	erosion after 3h classified as binomial (0= complete erosion, 1= not eroded)
detritus/lose layer	classification of the top layer type, if it was cohesive, lose, with dorught cracks)
erosionNOdebris	erosion depth (cm) after 3h of flow exposure removing the debris eroded after 10 - used for the analysis
LargeOC		weight of the larg organic material (g)
natural cracks	presence (yes)/ absence (no of natural cracks created by the dry summer

MarinDiaz et al cracks_stability.csv contains the data from the artificial cracks created in the resistant samples and the probability of sample collapse under fast water flow. 

code		first letter indicate the site and the number indicates the number of the 		sample, starting with the number 1 next to the dike, until the  mudflat 
clay_depth	depth of the cohesive top layer (cm)
crack width	width of the artificial crack created (cm)
crack depth	depth of the artificial crack (cm)
cracktype	classification of the crack (shallow or deep)
collapse	0=samples collapsed, 1= sample resisted to the water flow
ratio_claydepth_crackdepth	this ratios was calculated as clay depth/crackdepth