Data on three-year monitoring of benthic macroinvertebrates in ditches of the orchard region of Altes Land, Germany

The data presented in this article are related to the research article 'Chemical and biological monitoring of the load of plant protection products and of zoocoenoses in ditches of the orchard region Altes Land' (Süß et al., 2006) [1], which is only available in German. The benthic macro invertebrate data presented here were acquired from four ditches (three ditches were located in apple orchards, and one ditch was located in a grassland region) between 2001 and 2003 (Süß & Lorenz, 2020) [2]. This article describes the methods used to record the benthic macro invertebrate species. The field data set is publicly available at the OpenAgrar repository under https://doi.org/10.5073/20201029-170047 [2]. It is related to two field data sets, in which pesticide monitoring data (Lorenz et al., 2018) [3] and zooplankton monitoring data (Lorenz & Mueller, 2019) [4] from the same ditches and time period have been presented.