Tang, XiaoluXia, MingpengPérez Cruzado, CésarGuan, FengyingFan, Shaohui2017-10-202017-10-202017-02Tang, X., Xia, M., Pérez-Cruzado, C., Guan, F., & Fan, S. (2017). Spatial distribution of soil organic carbon stock in Moso bamboo forests in subtropical China. Scientific Reports, 7, 426402045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10347/15938Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys heterocycla (Carr.) Mitford cv. Pubescens) is an important timber substitute in China. Site specific stand management requires an accurate estimate of soil organic carbon (SOC) stock for maintaining stand productivity and understanding global carbon cycling. This study compared ordinary kriging (OK) and inverse distance weighting (IDW) approaches to study the spatial distribution of SOC stock within 0–60cm using 111 soil samples in Moso bamboo forests in subtropical China. Similar spatial patterns but different spatial distribution ranges of SOC stock from OK and IDW highlighted the necessity to apply different approaches to obtain accurate and consistent results of SOC stock distribution. Different spatial patterns of SOC stock suggested the use of different fertilization treatments in Moso bamboo forests across the study area. SOC pool within 0–60cm was 6.46 and 6.22 Tg for OK and IDW; results which were lower than that of conventional approach (CA, 7.41 Tg). CA is not recommended unless coordinates of the sampling locations are missing and the spatial patterns of SOC stock are not required. OK is recommended for the uneven distribution of sampling locations. Our results can improve methodology selection for investigating spatial distribution of SOC stock in Moso bamboo forestseng© 2017, the authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Bamboo forestSoil organic carbonSpatial distributionFertilizationjournal article10.1038/srep42640open access