Karst landforms are widely distributed in Guizhou Province, and the karst terrain is complex. To investigate the spatial distribution characteristics of soil organic carbon (SOC) in topsoil in different karst landforms, a total of 920 samples were taken from different karst landforms. The study areas, Puding, Xingyi, Guanling, Libo and Yinjiang in Guizhou Province, represent the karst plateau (KP), karst peak-cluster depression (KPCD), karst canyon (KC), karst virgin forest (KVF) and karst trough valley (KTV) landforms, respectively. The characteristics of the SOC contents in areas with different vegetation, land use and soil types under different karst landforms were analyzed. The dimensionality of the factors was reduced via principal component analysis, the relationships among SOC content and different factors were subjected to redundancy analysis, and the effects of the main impact factors on SOC were discussed. The results showed that there was a large discrepancy in the SOC contents in the topsoil layers among different types of karst landforms, the changes in the SOC content in the topsoil layer were highly variable, and the discrepancy in the upper soil layer was higher than that in the lower soil layer. The SOC contents in the 0-50 cm topsoil layers in different karst landforms were between 7.76 and 38.29 g·kg-1, the SOC content gradually decreased with increasing soil depth, and the descending order of the SOC contents in different karst landforms was KTV > KVF > KC > KPCD > KP.
Keywords: Guizhou Province in SW China; different karst landforms; effect mechanism; impact factor; soil organic carbon (SOC); spatial heterogeneity.