Uncertainties of soil organic carbon stock estimation caused by paleoclimate and human footprint on the Qinghai Plateau.

Background: Quantifying the stock of soil organic carbon (SOC) and evaluating its potential impact factors is important to evaluating global climate change. Human disturbances and past climate are known to influence the rates of carbon fixation, soil physiochemical properties, soil microbial diversity and plant functional traits, which ultimately affect the current SOC storage. However, whether and how the paleoclimate and human disturbances affect the distribution of SOC storage on the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau remain largely unknown.