Shift in controlling factors of carbon stocks across biomes on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (TP) accumulated a large amount of organic carbon, while its size and response to environmental factors for the whole area remain uncertain. Here, we synthesized a dataset to date with the largest data volume and broadest geographic coverage over the TP, composing of 7196 observations from multiple field campaigns since the 1980s, and provided a comprehensive assessment of the size and spatial distribution of carbon pools for both plant and soils on the TP using machine learning algorithms. The estimated soil organic carbon (SOC) storage to 1 m depth was ${\text{32}}{\text{.01}}_{{\text{19}}{\text{.69}}}^{{\text{47}}{\text{.9}}}$ Pg ( ${\text{11}}{\text{.72}}_{{\text{7}}{\text{.2}}}^{{\text{17}}{\text{.53}}}$ kg m ^−2 on average), accounting for approximately ${\text{37}}{\text{.2}}_{{\text{22}}{\text{.9}}}^{{\text{55}}{\text{.6}}}$ % of China’s SOC stock on its