| Understanding the distribution of organic carbon fractions in soils and their relationships with environmental factors are very important for appraising soil organic carbon status and assessing carbon cycling in the Loess Plateau. In this research, through field investigation and laboratory analysis, we studied the relationships between soil organic carbon and environmental factors in a gully watershed of the Loess Plateau. The environmental factors are landforms, land use conditions and soil types. The results showed that total soil organic carbon presented less variance, while high labile organic carbon presented greater variance. The variation coefficients of them are 34% and 43%, respectively, indicating that the variability of organic carbon in soils increased with the increasing of their activities. Total soil organic carbon, labile organic carbon, middle and high labile organic carbon were highly interrelated and presented similar distribution trend with environmental factors. Among different landforms, land uses, and soil types, the highest contents of organic carbon in different fractions were observed in plateau land, forest and farm lands, and black loessial soils, while the lowest contents of them were observed in gully bottom, grass land, and rubified soils, respectively. The relationships between organic carbon and environmental factors indicate that environmental factors not only directly influence the distribution of soil organic carbon, but also indirectly influence them through affecting the relationships among organic carbon fractions. The relationship between total organic carbon and labile organic carbon responses rapidly to environmental factors, while that between middle labile organic carbon and high labile organic carbon responses slowly to environmental factors. |
