Impacts of Climate and Land Cover on Soil Organic Carbon in the Eastern Qilian Mountains, China

Abstract

Soil, as the largest organic carbon pool of terrestrial ecosystem, plays a significant role in regulating the global carbon cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, and global climate change. It is of great significance to scientifically understand the change rule and influence mechanism of soil organic carbon (SOC) to further understand the "source–sink" transformation of SOC and its influence on climate change. In this paper, the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics and influencing mechanism of SOC were analyzed by means of field investigation and laboratory analysis and the measured data in the Eastern Qilian Mountains. The results showed that the average SOC content of 0–50 cm was 35.74 ± 4.15 g/kg and the range of coefficients of variation (CV) between 48.84% and 75.84%, which suggested that the SOC content exhibited moderate heterogeneity at each soil layer of the Eastern Qilian Mountains. In four land cover types, the SOC content of forestland was the highest, followed by alpine meadow, grassland, and wilderness, which presented surface enrichment, and there was a decreasing trend with the soil depth. From the perspective of seasonal dynamics, there was a uniform pattern of SOC content in different land cover types, shown to be the highest in winter, followed by autumn, spring, and summer, and with the biggest difference between winter and summer appearing in the surface layer. At the same time, our study suggested that the SOC content of different land cover types was closely related to aboveground biomass and negatively related to both the mean monthly temperature and the mean monthly precipitation. Therefore, the distribution and variation of SOC was the result of a combination of climate, vegetation, and other factors.