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. 2025 Apr;28(4):e70010.
doi: 10.1111/ele.70010.

Tea Bag Index Revisited: Risks of Misleading Decomposition Patterns

Taiki Mori  1
Affiliations

Tea Bag Index Revisited: Risks of Misleading Decomposition Patterns

Taiki Mori. Ecol Lett. 2025 Apr.

Abstract

This study shows that recent global analyses using the Tea Bag Index (TBI) are influenced by methodological flaws: (1) the interdependence of stabilisation factor (S) and decomposition constant (k) biases correlation analysis, (2) derivation of S and k from separate decomposition curves causes their decoupling, and most importantly, (3) the determination of k is inaccurate.

Keywords: Tea Bag Index; asymptote model; decomposition.

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References

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    1. Mori, T. 2022a. “Is the Tea Bag Index (TBI) Useful for Comparing Decomposition Rates Among Soils ?” Ecologies 3: 521–529.

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