ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Spatiotemporal Variations and Influencing Factors
in Soil Organic Carbon in Anhui Province, China
More details
Hide details
1
School of Earth and Environment, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, China
2
Huainan Ecological and Environmental Monitoring Center of Anhui Province, Huainan 232001, China
Submission date: 2024-12-11
Final revision date: 2025-02-27
Acceptance date: 2025-04-06
Online publication date: 2025-06-04
Corresponding author
Liangmin Gao
School of Earth and Environment, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, China
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Based on the soil data of Anhui Province in 1985 and 2018, the present study analyzed the
environmental factors affecting soil organic carbon (SOC) in Anhui Province by combining the "3S"
technology, correlation analysis, and principal component analysis. This study demonstrates the
spatial variation in soil organic carbon density (SOCD) in Anhui Province. Compared with 1985, 2018
demonstrated an 8.56% and 25.43% decrease in the percentage of areas with high and low SOCD values,
respectively. Correlation analysis shows that SOC showed significant negative correlations with bulk
density, pH, land use composite index (La), and temperature, and significant positive correlations with
elevation, slope, precipitation, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Further principal
component analysis showed that the main factors influencing SOC were elevation, precipitation, La, and
bulk density in 1985 and elevation, precipitation, pH, and bulk density in 2018. These findings revealed
the influence of topography, climate, and vegetation on the spatial variations in SOC.