Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 InternationalLeuther, FredericFredericLeuther2026-03-1820252026-03-18https://rdspace.uni-bayreuth.de/handle/rdspace-ubt/954https://doi.org/10.57880/rdspace-ubt-52In a laboratory study, we quantified the effect of maize crop residues (CR) in various concentrations (0, 2, and 5 wt.%) on the SHP of a loam soil and additionally measured the SHP of a mulch layer (100 wt.% CR) from saturation to oven dryness. We differentiated between shoot and root CR to quantify the effect of biomass quality and adapted the simplified evaporation method to measure the hydraulic properties of 100% CR layer. The experiments were run in triplicate and repeated after three weeks of incubation under optimal conditions for biological activity (30 °C, 90% RH) to simulate organic matter degradation after harvest. This dataset contains soil hydraulic measurements taken pre and post-incubation.enSoil PhysicsSoil hydraulic propertiescrop residuesSoil hydraulic propertiesLife SciencesAgriculture, Forestry and Veterinary MedicineAgriculture, Forestry and Veterinary MedicineSoil Sciencesnatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeochemistry & geophysicsagricultural and veterinary sciencesother agricultural sciencesPath4Med (10115867)Soil water retention curve (SWRC) and soil hyraulic conductivity curve (SHCC) were measured for all samples using the simplified evaporation method as implemented in the HYPROP device (METER Group, USA). The measurements of the SHP were performed under controlled climatic condition (20 °C, 63 - 67% relative humidity) in a climate constant room since OM degradation was expected to occur during the measurement phase. Before the start of the experiments, the samples were saturated with tab water by capillary rise over night and fully covered for 2 hours to gain near saturated initial conditions but avoiding long periods of anoxic conditions. HYPROP sensor units were prepared following the protocol using degassed water. The HYPROP experiments of the CR-soil mixtures were conducted for 9 days until both tensiometer experienced cavitation, and the residual water content was about 20 vol.-%. For each treatment, a dummy sample was run in parallel to take three subsamples at the end of the first round and measure water potential at low water contents via the dewpoint potentiometer WP4C (Meter Group, USA). This is a destructive approach to determine representative water contents and potential, therefore WP4C could not be measured for the same samples that were planned for incubation. After initial saturation, the 100% CR samples contained up to 90 % of water and thus measurements were run for 15 days to capture a wide range in water contents. We stopped the experiments before cavitation because degradation of CR already occurred during the experimental time and some tensiometers loosed hydraulic contact to the CR. Due to biological degradation we measured the water retention characteristics for the first round of HYPROP at dry conditions with WP4C for freshly cut material used to prepare the samples. After the incubation time, the second measurement of SHP followed the protocol of the first round except that after cavitation, three sub samples per CR-soil mixture replicate were taken from the top, centre, and bottom to measure water potential at low water contents via WP4C. Due to the low mass of the 100% CR samples, the entire sample was placed in a WP4C container. All subsamples were measured at various water contents. At the end, all samples and subsamples were dried at 105°C to gain the dry solid mass.The LABROS SoilView software was not able to fit the vanGenuchten model to the 100 W.% CR samples. It is recommended to use the SoilHyP R package (Dettmann, 2018).