Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization

Judith M Sarneel^{1

2}, Mariet M Hefting², Taru Sandén³, Johan van den Hoogen⁴, Devin Routh^{4

5}, Bhupendra S Adhikari⁶, Juha M Alatalo⁷, Alla Aleksanyan⁸, Inge H J Althuizen^{9

10}, Mohammed H S A Alsafran⁷, Jeff W Atkins¹¹, Laurent Augusto¹², Mika Aurela¹³, Aleksej V Azarov¹⁴, Isabel C Barrio¹⁵, Claus Beier¹⁶, María D Bejarano¹⁷, Sue E Benham¹⁸, Björn Berg¹⁹, Nadezhda V Bezler²⁰, Katrín Björnsdóttir²¹, Martin A Bolinder²², Michele Carbognani²³, Roberto Cazzolla Gatti^{24

25}, Stefano Chelli²⁶, Maxim V Chistotin²⁷, Casper T Christiansen^{28

29}, Pascal Courtois³⁰, Thomas W Crowther⁴, Michele S Dechoum³¹, Ika Djukic³², Sarah Duddigan³³, Louise M Egerton-Warburton³⁴, Nicolas Fanin¹², Maria Fantappiè³⁵, Silvano Fares³⁶, Geraldo W Fernandes^{37

38}, Nina V Filippova³⁹, Andreas Fliessbach⁴⁰, David Fuentes, Roberto Godoy⁴¹, Thomas Grünwald⁴², Gema Guzmán^{43

44}, Joseph E Hawes^{45

46

47}, Yue He^{48

49}, Jean-Marc Hero^{50

51}, Laura L Hess⁴⁶, Katja Hogendoorn⁵², Toke T Høye⁵³, Wilma W P Jans⁵⁴, Ingibjörg S Jónsdóttir⁵⁵, Sabina Keller⁵⁶, Sebastian Kepfer-Rojas¹⁶, Natalya N Kuz'menko⁵⁷, Klaus S Larsen¹⁶, Hjalmar Laudon⁵⁸, Jonas J Lembrechts⁵⁹, Junhui Li^{60

61}, Jean-Marc Limousin⁶², Sergey M Lukin⁶³, Renato Marques⁶⁴, César Marín⁶⁵, Marshall D McDaniel⁶⁶, Qi Meek⁶⁷, Genrietta E Merzlaya²⁷, Anders Michelsen^{28

68}, Leonardo Montagnani^{69

70}, Peter Mueller^{71

72}, Rajasekaran Murugan^{73

74}, Isla H Myers-Smith^{75

76}, Stefanie Nolte^{77

78}, Raúl Ochoa-Hueso⁷⁹, Bernard N Okafor⁸⁰, Vladimir V Okorkov⁶³, Vladimir G Onipchenko⁸¹, María C Orozco⁸², Tina Parkhurst⁸³, Carlos A Peres⁷⁷, Matteo Petit Bon^{84

85

86}, Alessandro Petraglia²³, Martin Pingel⁸⁷, Corinna Rebmann⁸⁸, Brett R Scheffers⁸⁹, Inger Schmidt¹⁶, Mary C Scholes⁹⁰, Efrat Sheffer⁹¹, Lyudmila K Shevtsova²⁷, Stuart W Smith^{92

93}, Adriano Sofo⁹⁴, Pablo R Stevenson⁹⁵, Barbora Strouhalová⁹⁶, Anders Sundsdal^{92

97}, Rafael B Sühs⁹⁸, Gebretsadik Tamene⁹⁹, Haydn J D Thomas⁷⁷, Duygu Tolunay², Marcello Tomaselli²³, Simon Tresch¹⁰⁰, Dominique L Tucker^{101

102}, Michael D Ulyshen¹⁰³, Alejandro Valdecantos^{104

105}, Vigdis Vandvik⁹, Elena I Vanguelova¹⁰⁶, Kris Verheyen¹⁰⁷, Xuhui Wang⁴⁸, Laura Yahdjian^{108

109}, Xaris S Yumashev¹¹⁰, Joost A Keuskamp^{2

111}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå Universitet, Umeå, Sweden.
² Ecology and Biodiversity Group, Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
³ Department for Soil Health and Plant Nutrition, Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), Vienna, Austria.
⁴ Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁵ Science IT, University of Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁶ Department of Habitat Ecology, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India.
⁷ Environmental Science Center, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
⁸ Department of Geobotany and Plant Ecophysiology, Institute of Botany aft. A.L. Takhtajyan NAS of RA, Yerevan, Armenia.
⁹ Department of Biological Sciences and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
¹⁰ NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway.
¹¹ USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, New Ellenton, South Carolina, USA.
¹² INRAE, Bordeaux Sciences Agro, ISPA, Villenave d'Ornon, France.
¹³ Finnish Meteorological Institute, Climate System Research, Helsinki, Finland.
¹⁴ Belgorod Federal Agrarain Scientific Center, Belgorod, Russia.
¹⁵ Faculty of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Agricultural University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
¹⁶ Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁷ Department of Natural Systems and Resources, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
¹⁸ Forest Research, Surrey, UK.
¹⁹ Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
²⁰ All-Russian Institute of Sugar and Sygar Beet Named after D. Mazlumov, Ramon, Russia.
²¹ Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
²² Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden.
²³ Department of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
²⁴ Biological Institute, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia.
²⁵ Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
²⁶ School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Camerino, MC, Italy.
²⁷ All-Russian Research Institute of Agrochemistry Named after D. Pryanishnikov, Moscow, Russia.
²⁸ Center for Permafrost (CENPERM), Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
²⁹ Terrestrial Ecology Section, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
³⁰ UMR Silva, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France.
³¹ Departamento de Ecologia e Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil.
³² Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Zurich, Switzerland.
³³ Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
³⁴ Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, Illinois, USA.
³⁵ Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria, Rome, Italy.
³⁶ National Research Council of Italy Institute for Agriculture and Forestry Systems in the Mediterranean, Naples, Italy.
³⁷ Departamento de Genética, Ecologia & Evolução, ICB/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
³⁸ Knowledge Center for Biodiversity, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
³⁹ Yugra State University, Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.
⁴⁰ Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Frick, Switzerland.
⁴¹ Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile.
⁴² Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Tharandt, Germany.
⁴³ Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (IFAPA), Camino de Purchil, Granada, Spain.
⁴⁴ Institute for Sustainable Agriculture-CSIC, Cordoba, Spain.
⁴⁵ Applied Ecology Research Group, School of Life Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.
⁴⁶ Earth Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA.
⁴⁷ Institute of Science and Environment, University of Cumbria, Ambleside, Cumbria, UK.
⁴⁸ College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁴⁹ International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.
⁵⁰ School of Anthropology and Conservation, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
⁵¹ School of Science, Technology and Engineering, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia.
⁵² School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
⁵³ Department of Ecoscience and Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark.
⁵⁴ Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
⁵⁵ Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
⁵⁶ Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁵⁷ Federal Scientific Center for Fiber Crops, Tver, Russia.
⁵⁸ Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden.
⁵⁹ Research Group Plants and Ecosystems (PLECO), University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium.
⁶⁰ Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.
⁶¹ Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
⁶² CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France.
⁶³ Upper Volga Federal Agrarain Scientific Center, Vladimir, Russia.
⁶⁴ Departamento de Solos e Engenharia Agrícola, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brasil.
⁶⁵ Centro de Investigación e Innovación para el Cambio Climático (CiiCC), Universidad Santo Tomás, Valdivia, Chile.
⁶⁶ Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA.
⁶⁷ Department of Renewable Resources, Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
⁶⁸ Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
⁶⁹ Forest Services, Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy.
⁷⁰ Libera Universita di Bolzano, Facoltà di Scienze e Tecnologie, Piazza Università, Bolzano, Italy.
⁷¹ Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland, USA.
⁷² Institute of Plant Science and Microbiology, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
⁷³ Soil Biology and Plant Nutrition, Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, University of Kassel, Witzenhausen, Germany.
⁷⁴ Valli Sustainability Research and Education, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁷⁵ Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry, Forest Sciences Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁷⁶ School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
⁷⁷ School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
⁷⁸ Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK.
⁷⁹ Department of Biology, IVAGRO, University of Cádiz, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Agroalimentario (ceiA3), Cádiz, Spain.
⁸⁰ National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria.
⁸¹ Department of Ecology and Plant Geography, Biological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
⁸² Department of Biological Sciences, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
⁸³ School of Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia, Australia.
⁸⁴ Department of Arctic Biology, The University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.
⁸⁵ Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, Faculty of Biosciences Fisheries and Economics, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
⁸⁶ Department of Wildland Resources, Quinney College of Natural Resources and Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA.
⁸⁷ Department of Applied Ecology, Hochschule Geisenheim University, Geisenheim, Germany.
⁸⁸ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany.
⁸⁹ Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
⁹⁰ School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
⁹¹ Institute of Plant Science and Genetics in Agriculture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
⁹² Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
⁹³ Ecological Science Department, The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, UK.
⁹⁴ Department of European and Mediterranean Cultures: Architecture, Environment, Cultural Heritage (DiCEM), University of Basilicata, Matera, Italy.
⁹⁵ Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
⁹⁶ Departement of Physical Geography and Geoecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
⁹⁷ Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences, University of South-Eastern, Notodden, Norway.
⁹⁸ Programa de pós-graduacão em Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil.
⁹⁹ Department of Natural Resource Management, College of Agriculture and Environmental, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.
¹⁰⁰ Institute for Applied Plant Biology, Witterswil, Switzerland.
¹⁰¹ Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
¹⁰² Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA.
¹⁰³ USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, Athens, Georgia, USA.
¹⁰⁴ Department of Ecology, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
¹⁰⁵ Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies, Ramon Margalef, IMEM, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
¹⁰⁶ Centre for Forest Protection, Forest Research, Surrey, UK.
¹⁰⁷ Department of Environment, Forest and Nature Lab, Gent University, Ghent, Belgium.
¹⁰⁸ Cátedra de Ecología, Facultad de Agronomía, UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
¹⁰⁹ Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA), Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires and CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
¹¹⁰ Chelyabinsk Agricultural Institute, Chelyabinsk, Russia.
¹¹¹ Biont Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

PMID: 38712683
DOI: 10.1111/ele.14415

Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization

Judith M Sarneel et al. Ecol Lett. 2024 May.

. 2024 May;27(5):e14415.

doi: 10.1111/ele.14415.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå Universitet, Umeå, Sweden.
² Ecology and Biodiversity Group, Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
³ Department for Soil Health and Plant Nutrition, Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), Vienna, Austria.
⁴ Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁵ Science IT, University of Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁶ Department of Habitat Ecology, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India.
⁷ Environmental Science Center, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
⁸ Department of Geobotany and Plant Ecophysiology, Institute of Botany aft. A.L. Takhtajyan NAS of RA, Yerevan, Armenia.
⁹ Department of Biological Sciences and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
¹⁰ NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway.
¹¹ USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, New Ellenton, South Carolina, USA.
¹² INRAE, Bordeaux Sciences Agro, ISPA, Villenave d'Ornon, France.
¹³ Finnish Meteorological Institute, Climate System Research, Helsinki, Finland.
¹⁴ Belgorod Federal Agrarain Scientific Center, Belgorod, Russia.
¹⁵ Faculty of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Agricultural University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
¹⁶ Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁷ Department of Natural Systems and Resources, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
¹⁸ Forest Research, Surrey, UK.
¹⁹ Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
²⁰ All-Russian Institute of Sugar and Sygar Beet Named after D. Mazlumov, Ramon, Russia.
²¹ Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
²² Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden.
²³ Department of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
²⁴ Biological Institute, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia.
²⁵ Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
²⁶ School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Camerino, MC, Italy.
²⁷ All-Russian Research Institute of Agrochemistry Named after D. Pryanishnikov, Moscow, Russia.
²⁸ Center for Permafrost (CENPERM), Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
²⁹ Terrestrial Ecology Section, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
³⁰ UMR Silva, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France.
³¹ Departamento de Ecologia e Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil.
³² Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Zurich, Switzerland.
³³ Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
³⁴ Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, Illinois, USA.
³⁵ Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria, Rome, Italy.
³⁶ National Research Council of Italy Institute for Agriculture and Forestry Systems in the Mediterranean, Naples, Italy.
³⁷ Departamento de Genética, Ecologia & Evolução, ICB/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
³⁸ Knowledge Center for Biodiversity, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
³⁹ Yugra State University, Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.
⁴⁰ Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Frick, Switzerland.
⁴¹ Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile.
⁴² Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Tharandt, Germany.
⁴³ Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (IFAPA), Camino de Purchil, Granada, Spain.
⁴⁴ Institute for Sustainable Agriculture-CSIC, Cordoba, Spain.
⁴⁵ Applied Ecology Research Group, School of Life Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.
⁴⁶ Earth Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA.
⁴⁷ Institute of Science and Environment, University of Cumbria, Ambleside, Cumbria, UK.
⁴⁸ College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁴⁹ International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.
⁵⁰ School of Anthropology and Conservation, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
⁵¹ School of Science, Technology and Engineering, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia.
⁵² School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
⁵³ Department of Ecoscience and Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark.
⁵⁴ Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
⁵⁵ Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
⁵⁶ Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁵⁷ Federal Scientific Center for Fiber Crops, Tver, Russia.
⁵⁸ Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden.
⁵⁹ Research Group Plants and Ecosystems (PLECO), University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium.
⁶⁰ Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.
⁶¹ Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
⁶² CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France.
⁶³ Upper Volga Federal Agrarain Scientific Center, Vladimir, Russia.
⁶⁴ Departamento de Solos e Engenharia Agrícola, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brasil.
⁶⁵ Centro de Investigación e Innovación para el Cambio Climático (CiiCC), Universidad Santo Tomás, Valdivia, Chile.
⁶⁶ Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA.
⁶⁷ Department of Renewable Resources, Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
⁶⁸ Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
⁶⁹ Forest Services, Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy.
⁷⁰ Libera Universita di Bolzano, Facoltà di Scienze e Tecnologie, Piazza Università, Bolzano, Italy.
⁷¹ Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland, USA.
⁷² Institute of Plant Science and Microbiology, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
⁷³ Soil Biology and Plant Nutrition, Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, University of Kassel, Witzenhausen, Germany.
⁷⁴ Valli Sustainability Research and Education, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁷⁵ Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry, Forest Sciences Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁷⁶ School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
⁷⁷ School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
⁷⁸ Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK.
⁷⁹ Department of Biology, IVAGRO, University of Cádiz, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Agroalimentario (ceiA3), Cádiz, Spain.
⁸⁰ National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria.
⁸¹ Department of Ecology and Plant Geography, Biological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
⁸² Department of Biological Sciences, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
⁸³ School of Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia, Australia.
⁸⁴ Department of Arctic Biology, The University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.
⁸⁵ Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, Faculty of Biosciences Fisheries and Economics, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
⁸⁶ Department of Wildland Resources, Quinney College of Natural Resources and Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA.
⁸⁷ Department of Applied Ecology, Hochschule Geisenheim University, Geisenheim, Germany.
⁸⁸ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany.
⁸⁹ Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
⁹⁰ School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
⁹¹ Institute of Plant Science and Genetics in Agriculture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
⁹² Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
⁹³ Ecological Science Department, The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, UK.
⁹⁴ Department of European and Mediterranean Cultures: Architecture, Environment, Cultural Heritage (DiCEM), University of Basilicata, Matera, Italy.
⁹⁵ Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
⁹⁶ Departement of Physical Geography and Geoecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
⁹⁷ Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences, University of South-Eastern, Notodden, Norway.
⁹⁸ Programa de pós-graduacão em Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil.
⁹⁹ Department of Natural Resource Management, College of Agriculture and Environmental, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.
¹⁰⁰ Institute for Applied Plant Biology, Witterswil, Switzerland.
¹⁰¹ Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
¹⁰² Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA.
¹⁰³ USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, Athens, Georgia, USA.
¹⁰⁴ Department of Ecology, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
¹⁰⁵ Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies, Ramon Margalef, IMEM, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
¹⁰⁶ Centre for Forest Protection, Forest Research, Surrey, UK.
¹⁰⁷ Department of Environment, Forest and Nature Lab, Gent University, Ghent, Belgium.
¹⁰⁸ Cátedra de Ecología, Facultad de Agronomía, UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
¹⁰⁹ Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA), Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires and CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
¹¹⁰ Chelyabinsk Agricultural Institute, Chelyabinsk, Russia.
¹¹¹ Biont Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

PMID: 38712683
DOI: 10.1111/ele.14415

Abstract

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to-degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models.

Keywords: citizen science; environmental drivers; global change; litter decomposition; mass loss; soil organic matter formation; stabilization; tea bag index.

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References

REFERENCES

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Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization

Affiliations

Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

References

REFERENCES

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Full Text Sources