Topography and litterfall input fail to maintain fine-scale soil NH4-N and NO3-N patch consistency in a tropical rainforest

Shang-Wen Xia1, 2 Jin Chen1*Doug Schaefer1and Uromi Manage Goodale3

1 Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xishuangbanna, 666303, China

2 Kunming College of Life Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049 Beijing, China

3 State Key Laboratory of Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro-bioresources,College of Forestry, Guangxi University, 530005, Nanning, China

Supplementary Table S1 Summary of the quality of the selected models fitted to each variable

Variable / Model / ME / RMSE / MSDR / CCC
pH / Gaussian / 0.001 / 0.290 / 1.16 / 0.70
Spherical / 0.001 / 0.285 / 1.15 / 0.72
Exponential / 0.001 / 0.284 / 1.13 / 0.72
Total N / Gaussian / -0.002 / 0.282 / 1.06 / 0.63
Spherical / -0.001 / 0.284 / 1.01 / 0.61
Exponential / -0.002 / 0.284 / 0.95 / 0.60
NH4-N / Gaussian / -0.003 / 2.890 / 1.47 / 0.46
Spherical / -0.004 / 2.900 / 1.47 / 0.45
Exponential / -0.009 / 2.900 / 1.42 / 0.45
NO3-N / Gaussian / -0.004 / 7.277 / 1.41 / 0.77
Spherical / -0.014 / 7.283 / 1.38 / 0.77
Exponential / -0.053 / 7.491 / 1.58 / 0.76
Available P / Gaussian / 0.018 / 3.445 / 1.46 / 0.63
Spherical / 0.019 / 3.467 / 1.44 / 0.62
Exponential / 0.022 / 3.463 / 1.41 / 0.62
Available K / Gaussian / 0.254 / 80.866 / 1.34 / 0.43
Spherical / 0.203 / 81.651 / 1.36 / 0.42
Exponential / 0.099 / 80.980 / 1.31 / 0.42

ME: Mean Error, RMSE: Root Mean Square Error, MSDR: Mean squared deviation ratio, CCC: Lin’s Concordance Correlation Coefficient.

Supplementary Table S2Correlation of litterfall mass among dry and rainy season of 3 years

D,2011 / D,2012 / D2013 / R,2011 / R,2012 / R,2013
D,2011
D,2012 / 0.81
D,2013 / 0.78 / 0.77
R,2011 / 0.08 / 0.16 / 0.24
R,2012 / 0.22 / 0.28 / 0.41 / 0.81
R,2013 / 0.18 / 0.24 / 0.4 / 0.76 / 0.8

Note: D indicate dry season, R indicate rainy season.

Supplementary Fig. S1Variation and patch distribution of Soil pH (a), Total N (b), NH4-N (c), NO3-N (d), Available P (e) and Available K (f) in the study plot