Abstract:To accurately estimate ecosystem carbon storages and explore its spatial distribution and influencing factor have great significance for regional ecological managements. However, the status and spatial pattern of carbon storages on the Loess Plateau and the driving factors are still unclear. This study, based on a large number of measured sample points of forest, grassland and cropland ecosystems in the Loess Plateau, used the Kriging interpolation method and the geostatistics method to estimate the spatial distribution of above- and belowground biomass carbon storages and 0-100 cm soil organic carbon storages in each ecosystem. Meanwhile, the study used path analysis to explore the main influencing factors of spatial patterns of carbon storages in different carbon pools. The results showed that total carbon storages of the Loess Plateau is about 2.29 Pg which only accounting for 2.3% of the carbon storages (99.15 Pg) in the whole China, and the Loess Plateau covers 6.7% of China. Of the Loess Plateau, the above- and belowground biomass carbon storages, and the soil organic carbon storages are 0.44 Pg, 0.32 Pg and 1.52 Pg, respectively. The carbon storages of forest, grassland and cropland (excluding vegetation) ecosystems are about 0.98 Pg, 1.09 Pg and 0.21 Pg, respectively. Climate factors (mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation), altitude, topography (slope), soil texture (sand, silt, clay content) and Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) can explain 12%, 8% and 32% of the spatial variations in above- and belowground biomass carbon storages and cropland soil organic carbon storages. Mean annual precipitation, altitude and clay content are main factors affecting the spatial patterns of carbon storages in the Loess Plateau. Overall, the study suggested that there had a large carbon pool in the Loess Plateau, but the values was lower than the average level of the whole China.