Fig. 1.

Topsoil (0–10 cm depth) carbon (C) characteristics of pasture, mixed species rainforest restoration plantings and reference rainforest sites in tropical north-eastern Australia. The first three panels depict organic C content (%) associated with a the sum of all organic forms of C present in ≤ 2 mm soil, b the coarse (particulate) fraction (50–2000 μm particles) and c organic C associated with the fine (humus) fraction (≤ 50 μm particles). The fourth panel depicts d δ¹³C of humic organic C HOC (‰) with particle size below 50 μm. Error bars for plantings represent standard error of the mean, while errors bars for the two other land uses represent standard errors of difference from revegetation (see the ‘Statistics’ subsection of the ‘Materials and Methods’ section for more detail). Letters above bars represent Tukey’s honest significant differences