The United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) North Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory - Soil Management Unit established a weather data collection system at the Swan Lake Research Farm in 1997. Weather data collected include wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, relative humidity, air temperature, soil temperatures, soil heat flux, solar radiation, photosynthetic active radiation, and precipitation. In 2015 the site became part of the Long Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) project. The Swan Lake Research Farm is located in Stevens County Minnesota, in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) watershed.

Lysimeters are instruments that measure water and/or solute movement in soils. The primary purpose for these lysimeters was to measure evapotranspiration (ET); these data describe changes in soil water during the snow-free season. In addition to measuring changes in total soil water, soil water content profiles and soil temperature profiles were measured within or adjacent to the lysimeters and are reported. Two pairs of soil lysimeters were installed in the RCEW in 1967, one pair at the Lower Sheep Creek climate station (designated the east and west lysimeters), separated, center to center, by 3.6 m, and the other pair at the Reynolds Mountain climate station (designated north and south), separated by 4.7 m. These lysimeters were hydraulic weighing lysimeters in which an inner cylindrical tank containing soil is set within a slightly larger outer cylinder.

Data from the current study were collected to examine the survival of non-pathogenic Escherichia coli and transfer to cucumbers grown in same field in two separate years. Soil moisture, total nitrogen, nitrate, total carbon, soluble carbon, soluble solids, rainfall, soil temperature and air temperature, along with the number of days needed for E. coli to decline by 4 log CFU/gdw, were included in random forest models used to a) predict 4-log declines of E. coli inoculated to soils and b) transfer of E. coli to cucumbers from soils with different biological soil amendments.

Management practices, such as irrigation, tillage, cropping system, and N fertilization, may influence soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We quantified the effects of irrigation, tillage, crop rotation, and N fertilization on soil CO2, N2O, and CH4 emissions from March to November, 2008 to 2011 in a Lihen sandy loam in western North Dakota.