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.

Details of experimental setup, collection of data, and statistical methods can be found in the paper "Biogeographic patterns of soil microbial biomass in alpine ecosystems depend on local rather than regional drivers."

Description of the data and file structure

Description of files:

• "Data.csv" --> data of information about the sample plots, SMB, MBC, MBN, F/B, and variables of four environmental parameter sets (i.e., macroclimate, plant functional traits, soil physicochemical properties, and topography).
• "Variable_names.xlsx" --> including the short names, long names, and units of variables in Data.csv.

Abbreviations: Mountains: AT: Altai Mountains, TS: Tian Mountains, CB: Changbai Mountains, QL: Qilian Mountains, BL: Balang Mountains, SL: Segrila Mountain, YL: Yulong Mountains, Altitude: Four key ecological transition zones were selected for sampling efforts: (1) the upper elevational limit of vegetation (High), (2) the alpine treeline (Treeline), (3) an intermediate elevation between the treeline and the upper vegetation limit (Middle), and (4) a lower elevational position below the treeline (Low), SDE: Standardized elevation, SMB: total microbial biomass, FB: the ratio of fungi to bacteria, MBC: soil microbial biomass carbon, MBN: soil microbial biomass nitrogen,NH4: ammonium nitrogen, NO3: nitrate nitrogen, TN: total nitrogen, TC: total carbon, SCN: ratio of soil carbon to nitrogen, MAT: mean annual air temperature, MTWM: maximum air temperature of warmest month, MTWQ: mean air temperature of warmest quarter, TS: air temperature seasonality, MAP: mean annual precipitation, PWQ: precipitation of warmest quarter, PS: precipitation seasonality, LDMC: leaf dry matter content, SLA: specific leaf area, leafC: leaf carbon, leafN: leaf nitrogen, leafCN: ratio of leaf carbon to nitrogen, TWI: topographic wetness index.

Code/Software

“R_code.R” shows a part of statistical analysis process in the research, which consists of 3 parts:

• Evaluation of distribution patterns of soil microbial biomass along the elevation gradient
• Linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) with univariate structures to rank the environmental variables
• Assessments of microbial-environment relationship across local and regional scales

All of this code runs in R (v4.3.0, R Core Team, 2023).