Soil carbon and nitrogen stocks along the altitudinal gradient of the Darjeeling Himalayas, India.

Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon pool and has been increasingly recognized to play crucial role to mitigate global warming resulting from climate change and land use and land cover change. The carbon cycle is closely linked with nitrogen cycles and needs to be studied together for their important implications for mitigating land degradations and associated declining productivity. Within the global biodiversity hotspot of Himalayas, which constitutes more than one third of India's carbon pool, the Eastern Himalayas in spite of having highest forest cover, protected area network coverage, biodiversity, and endemicity have been understudied for soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics.