Microbial production of CO2 in red soil in Stone Forest National Park

Lunan stone forest is a kind of typical karst in China,Which is mainly developed under red soil.In the winter of 1999,three study sites were chosen in stone forest national park according to vegetation cover,geomporphologic location and soil types,CO2 concentration was measured with Gastec punp at different dephts of soil (20,40,60cm) and at the same time soil samples were gatered and soil properties such as soil moisure,pH,soil organic content were analyzed and the total nmuber of viable microbes were counted in laboratory,In the study,dependent variable was chosen as the mean soil log(PCO2),and soil properties were chosen as the independent variables.Multiple stepwise regression analysis showed that the totla amount of microbes and soil moisture are the best indicators of the CO2 production,With the equation LOG(PCO2)=-0.039(TNM)-0.056 (Mo) 1.215 accounting for 86% of the variation of the soil CO2 concentration,where TNM is the total number of microbes in teh soil and Mo is the moisture of soil sample.