A restructured and updated global soil respiration database (SRDB-V5).

Field-measured soil respiration (R_S, the soil-to-atmosphere CO₂ flux) observations were compiled into a global soil respiration database (SRDB) a decade ago, a resource that has been widely used by the biogeochemistry community to advance our understanding of R_S dynamics. Novel carbon cycle sciences questions require updated and augmented global information with better interoperability among datasets. Here, we restructured and updated the global R_S database to version SRDB-V5. The updated version has all previous fields revised for consistency and simplicity, and it has several new fields to include ancillary information (e.g., R_S measurement time, collar insertion depth, collar area). The new SRDB-V5 includes published papers through 2017 (800 independent studies) where total observations increased from 6633 in SRDB-V4 to 10366 in SRDB-V5. The SRDB-V5 features more R_S data published in Russian and Chinese scientific literature, has an improved global spatio-temporal coverage, and improved global climate-space representation. We also restructured the database so that it has stronger interoperability with other datasets related to carbon-cycle science. For instance, linking SRDB-V5 with an hourly timescale global soil respiration database (HGRsD) and an open community database for continuous soil respiration and other chamber flux data (COSORE) enables researchers to explore new questions. The updated SRDB-V5 aims to be a data framework for the scientific community to share seasonal to annual field R_S measurements, and it provides opportunities for the biogeochemistry community to better understand the spatial and temporal variability of R_S, its components, and the overall carbon cycle. The database can be downloaded at https://github.com/bpbond/srdb and ORNL DAAC [Submitted]. All data and code to reproduce the results in this study can be found at: Jian, Jinshi, Bond-Lamberty, Ben. (2020). jinshijian/ESSD: SRDB-V5 first release (Version v1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3876443. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]