Relationship between plants and soil resource patterns on forest land at different scales using a new theoretical model

•The relationship between plants and soil resource is ambiguous.•The method of IGPS can be used to quantify this relationship.•IGPS has been confirmed to be a powerful method to deal with this issue.•Different plant species exert different effects on soil resource pattern.•Plant species exert different effects on different soil resource pattern.

Recently, plant root or crown size has been used in researching spatial relationships between plants and soil resources in most studies, and different methods have been used to address this relationship. However, few studies have reviewed the quantification of the relationship between plants and soil resources, and few studies have explained the roles of different plant functional groups on the soil resource distribution. In this paper, a method called integration of geostatistics, point pattern analysis and spatial comparison (IGPS) was used to quantify this relationship. The relationships between plants and soil resource patterns were evaluated from four plots with different spatial scales and different slopes within the Ziwuling Mountains of China. Several relationships were identified using IGPS. We have proved that in IGPS, the aggregation scale between plants and soil resources has been substituted for root or crown size to deeply reveal the spatial relationship between plants and soil resources. The results confirm that this method can not only determine which plant functional group can be affected by which resource but can also quantify the spatial relationship between plants and soil resources. These findings are important because this knowledge can be useful in formulating pasture and forest management strategies. IGPS is a powerful method to assist in study of the spatial relationships between plants and soil resources, and we recommend that this method be used worldwide.