Figure
Legends
Fig. 1 The geographic location of the 10 mountains and
experimental setup. a: the distribution of the studied mountains
spanning subtropical and tropical regions in China. From the West to
East: GMT: Gaoligong Mountain; YMT: Jade Dragon Snow Mountain; EMS:
E’mei Mountain; JFS: Jinfo Mountain; DMS: Daming Mountain; BWL:
Bawangling; GS: Guan Mountain; DBS: Dabie Mountain; DYS: Daiyun
mountain; TMS: Tianmu mountain. Different elevations are shown in
colours. b: An example of decomposing design. c: standard tea bags
before burying. d: retrieved tea bags after 90-day decomposition.
Fig. 2 Elevational patterns of decomposition rate (a) and
stabilization (b) in each mountain. Colours represent different
mountains. Dashed and solid least
squares regression lines
represent non-significant and significant relationships between
elevation and decomposition rates or stabilization, respectively. The
elevation of each mountain has been scaled between 0 to 1.
Fig. 3 The relative importance of environmental drivers for
explaining the elevational variations of decomposition rate (k )
in each mountain. The importance value of each driver is extracted from
AIC weight based on model averaging. Colours indicate the four groups
(navy blue-Microclimate; gray-plant; yellow-Soil physiochemistry;
red-microhabitat) of environmental drivers. Temp: mean temperature of
the growth season; TempV: temperature variation of the growing season;
Mois: mean moisture of the growth season; MoisV: moisture variation of
the growth season, Tree: tree species richness; Soil P: soil total
phosphorus, Cover: Canopy cover; Thick: ground litter thickness.
Fig. 4 The relative importance of environmental drivers for
explaining the elevational variations of stabilization (S ) in
each mountain. Other explanations can be found in Figure 3.
Fig. 5 Scatter plots showing the effect of four microclimatic
drivers on decomposition rates (a, b, c, d) and stabilization (e, f, g,
h) in each mountain.
The black regression line in each
panel represents the relationship across all mountains. The shaded area
shows the confidence interval at the 95% level. Solid and dashed lines
indicate significant and non-significant effects, respectively.
Fig. 6 Scatter plots
showing the effect of three selected non-climatic drivers on
decomposition rates (a, b, c) and stabilization (d, e, f) in each
mountain. Other explanations can be found in Figure 5.