Soil respiration is a key factor for understanding the responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change, and it is crucial to understand the effects of variation in biophysical regulators of soil respiration for assessing carbon balance of forested temperate ecosystem. One fundamental challenge for soil research is the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of soil processes. Therefore, we deployed a dense array of soil sensor in combination with minirhizotrons to study variation in soil temperature, moisture, root production, and rhizomorph production on soil respiration within natural spatial gradients at the James Reserve. We used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to find out which factors are significant to the soil respiration in various depths.