A comparative study was made of the vertical distribution characteristics of soll carbon and nitrogen contents of forest plantation, economic forest-land, nursery garden, slope farm land, deforested-land and abandoned land in the central hilly area of Hunan province. The results show that the soil organic carbon content decreased gradually with the increase of soil depth on 6 kinds of land use types and according to the variation coefficient, it went down as follows, abandoned land (80. 09~)〉economic (forestland (67.21%)〉slope farm land ...