Spatial distribution of litter storage in China

Plant litter is an important carbon pool in the terrestrial carbon balance. Therefore, it is important to acquire the spatial distribution of litter storage at a large scale, in order to predict the effects of environmental changes, such as climate warming and precipitation changes on plant communities. The present study analyzed the spatial distribution of litter storage in China, based on the field measurement data, geographical and climate information. Litter storage field measurement data from publications of forest studies from 1999 to 2008 in China, 228 data sets, were summarized in this study, and how the temperature and precipitation influence the spatial distribution of litter storage of dominant ecosystems were investigated. The map of vegetation distribution was acquired from MODIS data. The spatial distribution of temperature and precipitation were obtained from about 650 meteorological stations with the help of DEM. Mean litter storages ranged from 2.06 Mg/ha (alpine tundra) to 9.87 Mg/ha (conifer forests) among five types of forests, and were 2.09 Mg/ha (in south subtropical zone) to18.2 Mg/ha (in warm-temperate zone) among climate types. The distribution of forest litter storage density has mainly influenced by mean annual temperature in the longitude≥120° E zones, and by mean annual precipitation in the 110° E≤ longitude ≪120° E zones. When longitude ≪ 110° E, whether the mean annual precipitation ≥ 1000mm has been a delimitation of whether precipitation or temperature are the complex factor to influence the litter storage density.