Research data of "Distribution, characteristics, and importance of particulate and mineral-associated organic carbon in China forest"

We used the Web of Science (https://www.webofscience.com), Google Scholar (https://scholar. google.com), and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI, http://www.cnki.net) to compile a list of all peer-reviewed articles that investigated the soil organic carbon components in forest ecosystem of China.

Apart from the SOC and SOC components, forest types, forest age, sampling depth, climatic properties (MAT and MAP), vegetation (microbial biomass carbon, litter biomass, living fin root biomass, above-ground biomass carbon) and edaphic properties (soil pH, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, soil type, dissolved organic carbon, bulk density and Silt+Clay%) in sites for each study were extracted from material and method section, tables or supporting information in each study.

After multiple screening of articles, we totally collected 540 observational data from 59 independent studies, which covers major forest ecosystems of China.