Soil quality data from Mesa Redonda at Villaverde del Río (ES-SE), field campaign 2023-03

Soil quality is a key feature for agriculturual management and to discribe the growing potential for field crops. It involves soil organic carbon content (SOC), soil acidity (pH), cation exchange capacity (CEC) and water content at field capacity (θFC). Since these soil properties are time consuming and costly to measure, we employed machine learning models to predict them from MIR spectra. The dataset was used to predict soil organic carbon (%), clay (<2 µm), silt (2-50 µm), and sand (50-2000 µm) content (%) and pH on samples that were not analysed with wet chemistry. Subsequently, cation exchange capacity (cmol kg⁻¹; doi:10.1016/j.catena.2017.07.002) and water content at field capacity (cm³ cm⁻³; doi:10.1111/ejss.12192) were calculated with the referenced pedo-transfer functions. The soil samples were taken in an area around Villaverde del Río, Andalusia, Spain, in the Sierra Morena mountain range (Palaeozoic granite, gneiss, and slate) and at the Guadalquivir river flood plain (Pleistocene marl, calcarenite, coarse sand, and Holocene sands and loams). Present soil types according to USDA Soil Taxonomy are Alfisols, Entisols, Inceptisols, and Vertisols. For more details see "SFB 1070 A02 - Short report on pedological analysis at Mesa Redonda, Villaverde del Río, ES-SE".