Spatial heterogeneity of soil nutrients in old growth forests of Korean pine

Abstract

In this paper, we used geostatistics studied the spatial heterogeneity of total nitrogen and phosphorus on the top soil (0–10 cm) in old growth forests of Korean pine. There was a high degree of spatial heterogeneity of both nutrients which were dependent scales. The isotropic spatial dependent scale were 6.19 m (N%) and 11.10 m (P%). Both nutrients have anisotropic structures at sampled area. Spatial heterogeneity of autocorrelated was over 80%, and spatial autocorrelation was important in nutrient variations in space. This caused spatial patterns of total nitrogen and phosphorus in forest top soil.