Biogeographic patterns of soil microbial biomass in alpine ecosystems depend on local rather than regional drivers

Analyses for the manuscript “Biogeographic patterns of soil microbial biomass in alpine ecosystems depend on local rather than regional drivers” using soil microbial and environmental data collected for a large-scale sampling campaign along elevational gradients in seven mountains across mainland China. The dataset included information about the sample plots, data of soil microbial biomass, and variables of four environmental parameter sets (i.e., macroclimate, plant functional traits, soil physicochemical properties, and topography), and relevant code for statistical analysis.

Methods

In this study, we conducted a large-scale sampling campaign along seven elevation gradients across mainland China.
We measured soil microbial biomass using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis and the chloroform fumigation extraction method.
We analyzed plant and soil samples to determine plant functional traits and soil physicochemical properties, and we extracted macroclimate, and terrain data from the CHELSA, and SRTM datasets, respectively.
To improve the normality and homoscedasticity of the residuals before statistical analysis, we examined the variables of soil microbial biomass, F/B, MBC, and MBN for normality and homogeneity using the Shapiro-Wilk and Levene tests. We transformed the variables using ln(x) when necessary. All the variables of four environmental factors were transformed to Z-scores before fitting the models.