This dataset contains the data obtained and utilized for the manuscript: The importance of marshes providing soil stabilization to resist fast-flow erosion in case of a dike breach. The aim was to quantify the topsoil erosion resistance from marshes and bare tidal flats with different soil types to understand the extent to which they can help reduce breach depth in case of a dike breach during a storm. Intact soil samples were collected from eleven locations in the Netherlands at different tidal elevations and then exposed for three hours to 2.3 m s-1 currents in a flow flume. The topsoil erosion was measured for each sample. The dataset includes 1) a file with the belowground vegetation properties, sediment properties and erosion values for each soil sample; 2) a file with soil stability data from artificial cracks made in some of the samples at the end of the topsoil erosion experiment; and 3) the code for the data analysis in R.