Depth-distribution patterns and control of soil organic carbon in coastal salt marshes with different plant covers

This study was carried out in three kinds of salt marshes according to the vegetation covers, including Phragmites australis salt marsh (PSM), Suaeda salus salt marsh (SSM) and Tamarix chinensis-Suaeda salus salt marsh (TSSM). We applied allometric function, exponential function and logistic function to model the depth distribution of the SOCv and SOCc for each salt marsh, respectively. The results showed that the exponential function fits the depth distribution of the SOCv more well than other two functions. The SOCc can be fitted very well by all three functions for three salt marsh (Adj. R(2) > 0.99), of which the allometric function was the best one. The mean topsoil concentration factors (TCFs) of three salt marshes were beyond 0.1, which means the SOC enrichment in surface soils due to plant cycling, but TCFs in PSM were significantly higher than those in SSM (P < 0.05). Nearly 30% of SOC was concentrated in the top 20 cm soils. The results of general linear model (GLM) suggested that four soil properties (soil water content, pH, soil salt content and silt+clay) and their interactive effects explained about 80% of the total variation of SOC stock in the top 20 cm soils and the 20–100 cm soil layers.