Data for: Livestock grazing, plant community and abiotic factors shape blue carbon stocks in Nordic coastal marshes

These datasets support the manuscript "Livestock grazing, plant community and abiotic factors shape blue carbon stocks in Nordic coastal marshes", which will be submitted to Biogeosciences. The data was generated to investigate the organic carbon stocks and their main drivers in Nordic costal marshes. The datasets contain raw data from the field sampling conducted in 12 pairs of grazed and ungrazed costal marshes accross Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. The sites are mainly located around the Baltic Sea to capture a broad environmental gradient. File structure and content: Data.xlsx: the site characteristics and environmental variables (columns A to K); plant community description including some plant percentage cover, plant height, and biodiversity indices (columns L to U); aboveground biomass and associated organic carbon (OC) stocks (columns V-W); belowground biomass and associated OC stock over the first 50cm depth (columns X-Y); soil characteristics and OC sotcks over 50 cm depth (columns Z to AF). Profile.xlsx: raw data of soil characteristics and OC stocks over decompressed soil depth (columns A to Q); and belowground biomass and associated OC stock over decompressed soil depth (columns R to AB). cover_1x1_matrix.csv: percentage cover of each identified plant species in 1x1m quadrat accross all grazed and ungrazed sites. Units for all variables are provided in braken in the first row of each file. Data were collected using standardized field sampling procedures. Detailed descriptions of the methodology and data processing are provided in the Materiel and methods section of the associated manuscript. The datasets will be made plublicly available upon acceptance of the manuscript in Biogeosciences. This work was supported by the BiodivERsA/BiodivClim ERA-Net COFUND programme (NordSalt – Climate Change Impacts and Biodiversity Interactions in Nordic Salt Marshes, BiodivClim-845, 2019-2022) and the LIFE Programme COASTal LIFE project (LIFE21-NAT-DK-COASTal-LIFE/101074422), in collaboration with national agencies (Innovation Fund Denmark (ID), The Academy of Finland (AKA), German Research Foundation (DFG), The Research Council of Norway (RCN), and the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS)) Keyword. Salt marshes, Coastal meadows, Environmental gradients, Northern Europe, Baltic Sea, Ecosystem functioning, Management, Climate mitigation