Soil metagenomes from ridge and valley following large-tree mortality in a subtropical forest, Dinghushan, China

This project contains shotgun metagenomic sequencing data from mineral soil samples collected in July 2022 within a 20-ha forest dynamics plot in the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve, Guangdong, China. A total of 72 tree-level composite soil samples were collected from a depth of 0–30 cm beneath 36 large dead canopy trees and 36 adjacent living conspecific trees of comparable diameter at breast height. The paired sampling design included six canopy tree species distributed across two contrasting topographic settings: ridge and valley. Five soil cores collected beneath each tree were combined and homogenized to form one composite sample. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing was performed on an Illumina NovaSeq X Plus platform. The resulting sequence data support the construction of a non-redundant metagenome-derived gene catalogue, functional annotation of predicted protein-coding genes, and quantification of sample-specific functional gene abundances.