Investigation of some physical and chemical properties of forest floor under pure scotch pine stands in Ardahan region according to ecological factors

The study aimed to determine the variations in some physical and chemical properties of forest floor under pure Scotch pine stands according to ecological factors such as climate, elevation, slope, aspect, and latitude-longitude. For this purpose, total 457 forest floor samples were collected from 4 points in 52- sample plot by distinguishing into three layers as litter (L), fermentation (F) and humus (H). On each forest floor layers, six-different properties such as pH, electrical conductivity (EC), organic carbon (OC), bulk density (BD), maximum water holding capacity (MWHC), layer thickness and air-dried and oven-dried weight were determined. Average values for some forest floor properties were determined as 34477 kg/ha for oven-dried weight, 5,99 for pH, 267,5 momh for EC, %272,9 for MWHC, %35,8 for OC and 0,0012 gr/cm3 for BD. Then, those forest floor properties were correlated with ecological factors and modelled by multiple linear regression (MLR) and regression tree (RT) by using above mentioned ecological factors. From the results, Their adjusted coefficient of determination (R2adj) were found as between 0,07 and 0,57 for MLR and between 0,10 and 0,95 for RT. In general, RT outperformed to MLR with higher R2adj and lower RMSE, MAE and AIC.