5 research outputs found
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Reading tea leaves worldwide: decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilisation
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
Arthropods in coarse woody debris in jarrah forest and rehabilitated bauxite mines in Western Australia
Coarse woody debris (CWD) is returned to Alcoa’s rehabilitated mined areas in the jarrah forest as potential vertebrate fauna habitat, however, its value for invertebrate fauna has not been investigated. We sought to determine if CWD in rehabilitated areas supported a similar arthropod fauna to that on fallen logs in the adjacent unmined jarrah forest. Using emergence tents, sampling from logs in 5-year old and 15-year old rehabilitated forest, and in unmined forest, yielded 2266 specimens from 187 taxa. Collembola (43% of total) and Acarina (32%) were the most abundant groups, followed by Diptera (11%), Araneae (4%) and Coleoptera (3%). There were no significant differences in either taxa richness or overall abundance among the three forest types. However, community composition varied significantly. Species richness from the Araneida, Coleoptera and Diptera was highest in the 5-year old rehabilitated forest, while Collembola and Acarina were better represented in the unmined forest; this was related to changes in the environment surrounding the logs as rehabilitated forest develops, and to log condition. The composition of arthropods on logs in the 15-year old rehabilitated forest was intermediate, indicating a trend of increasing similarity to the unmined forest in arthropod fauna as the rehabilitated forest ages. We suggest that over longer time periods, CWD in rehabilitated forest will support arthropod communities similar to those found in unmined forest. Future work should determine if returning logs to mined areas facilitates the return of CWD-dependent taxa