In the year 2015, the management of the Marganai forest (D.R.E.Am. Italia & R.D.M. Progetti, 2014) has been accused of promoting soil erosion through coppicing (Branca et. al, 2020; doi:10.3390/f11060708). In 2018 Regione Sardegna financed this project (within Progetto Sulcis, 2018) in the attempt to face the problem by adopting a scientific approach. Experimental trials have been conducted to evaluate the effect of forest cover on sediment transport due to rain. The test-plot pairs (or blocks) have been localized In two neighboring hillslopes (forest management parcels 20 and 41, 4 blocks per part) with similar conditions regarding soil characteristics, tree species, stumps density, and size. Each block included the contrasting situations: a plot with canopy cover (i.e. with a stump and its sprouts in the center of the plot) and one without a forest canopy cover. Individual plots are 1 m wide and 1.5 m long along the maximum slope gradient. On the downslope end water is collected, while other sides are delimited by planks. On the edges of the plots, 3 rainfall gauges were positioned to check the rainfall distribution during each test and the actual intensity of the simulated rainfall was calculated by weighted average according to Thiessen polygons. Artificial rain was provided, for two or three 30 min periods, with a mean intensity of 43 mm/h, greatly exceeding rainfall records. The equipment consists of a wooden tripod that can be easily assembled, similar to that used in Commandeur (1992), carrying the nozzle positioned 4 m above the ground, central with respect to the plot surface, in order to provide a homogeneous distribution of rainfall. The nozzle used is a calibrated Lechler nozzle (mod. 490.888) with a jet width of 120 degrees, to which an average water pressure of 1.5 bar was applied. Runoff and sediments were collected at the rate of 5 minutes in bottles of 0.5 liters. A total of 222 samples containing water and sediments were collected. All samples were weighted in the field and stored for laboratory analysis, where the weights of soil (solid particles) and organic matter have been separately determined. Due to the scarcity of sediments in each bottle, analysis has been carried out using 30 minutes aggregated samples.

File formats: There are two files. The data consists of many connected tables that are hence stored in an SQLite3 database file,including metadata. The pdf file exposes, in a ready to read format, the contents and structure of the database.Tool: Database and documentation are produced using the NFS-FAIR-DDP (Scotti, Roberto. 2022. "NFS-Data-Documentation-Procedure" (version 0.1.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13332964.)Award: Progetto Sulcis, 2018. Project funded by Regione Sardegna (Italy), co-funded by European Regional Development Fund (ROP Sardegna ERDF) [project code SULCIS-820965].