Fig 1.
(a) Map showing study sites (b) Scheme of vegetation along the elevation gradient.
Table 1.
General characteristics of the study sites.
Fig 2.
Stocks of C and N in soil and biomass (a-g); litter dry weight (h); soil pH (i); and soil bulk density (j), in the examined sites (A-E). Different letters indicate significant differences between sites. Vertical bars represent the standard deviation of the mean.
Table 2.
Linear (lm) and polynomial regressions (poly) between the different parameters tested and elevation.
Table 3.
Spearman rank coefficients for the correlations between different variables.
Fig 3.
Rates of soil respiration against chamber air temperature in the different sites.
Regression lines were built using the mean values of model parameters obtained for different replicate collars of each site (n = 10).
Table 4.
Mean values of Q10 (temperature sensitivity) and SRref (soil respiration at the temperature of 10°C) for each site (A, B, C, D and E).
Fig 4.
Total cumulative soil respiration (kg C m-2 yr-1) for the different sites.
Error bars indicate standard deviation. Different letters indicate significant differences between sites.
Fig 5.
Relationships between reference soil respiration at 10°C (SRref) and different site properties.
Table 5.
Results of linear mixed-effects models testing the impact of biological variables on the SRref at 10°C.