Abstract: As an important ecological barrier for the North China Plain, research on the spatial variations of soil nutrients in the southern foot of the Taihang Mountains is of great significance for the forestry ecological construction in this rocky mountainous area. With the typical slopes (the artificial forestland and the natural wild slope) of the southern foot of the Taihang Mountains as the research objects, we used the grid method to arrange sampling points, and combined classical statistics, geostatistics and constrained sorting methods to analyze the spatial variations of soil nutrients. The results showed that: 1) soil total carbon (TC) contents were 6.80-57.05 g·kg^-1, and the total nitrogen (TN) contents were 0.74-3.93 g·kg^-1. The coefficients of variation of both soil TC and TN were 25.0%-52.8%, belonging to the moderate degree of variation, which were caused by the combination of random and structural factors. The spatial aggregation of soil nutrients decreased with increasing lag distances. 2) The contents of soil nutrients had increasing trends from the top to the bottom of the slopes, with high nutrient values appearing at the bottom of the slopes. 3) The soil bulk density, gravel content, vegetation coverage, and soil water content were the main factors affecting the spatial variability of soil TC and TN on the southern foot of the Taihang Mountains. 4) Soil water content was the main factor affecting soil nutrients at the natural wild slope, but not at the artificial forestland.

Key words: southern foot of Taihang Mountains, soil carbon, soil nitrogen, spatial variability, semi-variance analysis, redundancy analysis