Water, carbon and nitrogen cycling in a rendzina soil cropped with winter oilseed rape: the Châlons Oilseed Rape Database

International audienceThe Châlons Oilseed Rape Database holds the results of a comprehensive experiment on the dynamic fluxes of water, carbon and nitrogen within a soil-crop system at the field-scale, conducted in the Champagne region in France. The Châlons experiment started with the sowing of a rapeseed crop (Brassica napus L.) in September 1994, and stopped at its harvest in July 1995. It involved three fertilizer N treatments and a bare control. The soil was a rendzina overlying a subsoil of mixed compact and cryoturbed chalk. The variables monitored were: crop biomass, C and N content, soil matric potential, water and mineral N contents, actual evapotranspiration, nitrous oxide emissions, and ammonia volatilization, along with the usual meteorological data. Mass-balance estimates of water drainage and NO3 leaching below the root-zone, along with 15N balances accounting for the short-term dynamics of fertilizer N are also available. The data are accessible on the Internet through a World Wide Web server by means of a specific front-end, and may be used to test or calibrate soil-crop models