Abstract:Soil organic matter (SOM) plays an important role in the maintenance of ecosystem productivity. In particular, the fractions, spatial distribution, and spatial dependency of SOM are important factors influencing multiple ecosystem processes including nutrient cycling, retention, and availability for plant growth. In the present study, geostatistical approaches were used to study the spatial variability of total and labile SOM fractions from the soil at a depth of 0-20 cm, in a Broad-Leaved Korean Pine forest in Changbai Mountain, China. Furthermore, the dependency between total SOM and labile organic matter was analyzed by calculating the cross-variogram. The results showed that:(1) The spatial heterogeneity of soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), particulate organic carbon (POC), and particulate organic nitrogen (PON) was smaller than soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC), microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN), and the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the surface horizon (0-10 cm); (2) With increased soil depth, the autocorrelation of SOC, TN, MBC, DOC, POC, and PON increased, but remained unchanged for dissolved organic nitrogen (DON); (3) SOC and TN were positively correlated in space within both the 0-10 cm and 10-20 cm soil layers; (4) SOC and TN were both spatially correlated to MBC, MBN, DOC, DON, and POC, respectively, but were not related to PON; (5) The correlations between labile organic matter varied with soil depth. The labile organic matter fractions were spatially correlated with each other at all depths, except POC and PON on the surface. Our results suggest that the spatial heterogeneity and dependency of SOM fractions are different at small scales in a Broad-Leaved Korean Pine forest in Changbai Mountain, providing an important theoretical basis to understand the ecological function of soil nutrient cycling in forest ecosystems.