EGU2020-6297, updated on 28 Dec 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-6297
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Litter decomposition under drought related with litter and decomposer diversity

Junwei Luan1, Shirong Liu2, Siyu Li1, Yi Wang1, Haibo Lu3, Junhui Zhang4, Shijie Han5, Hui Wang2, Lin Chen2, Wenjun Zhou6, and Yiping Zhang6
Junwei Luan et al.
  • 1Institute for Resources and Environment, International Centre for Bamboo and Rattan, Beijing, PR China
  • 2The Research Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, PR China
  • 3School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, PR China
  • 4CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, PR China
  • 5Henan University, Kaifeng, PR China
  • 6Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, PR China

Litter decomposition is a crucial ecosystem process that driven carbon and nutrient cycling, which can be determined by the diversity of biota that involved in decomposition process. Forest ecosystems at globally have been or being expected to experience drought stress and cause dieback, consequently may lead losses of tree species and soil biota. However, how projected drought affect litter decomposition and its relationship with biodiversity is less understood. We hypothesize that 1) drought depressed the activity of soil biota and retard litter decomposition, while biodiversity loss at both plant and soil organism levels exacerbated the drought induced retarding of litter decomposition; 2) soil biota interaction or the top down control of ecosystem process can be relieved under drought stress. In our study, throughfall reduction experiments were conducted in five locations representing different forest types (i.e., temperate broadleaf-Korean pine mixed forest, warm-temperate oak forest, subtropical bamboo forest, south subtropical evergreen forest, tropical rainforest) along a climate gradient in China. In each location, leaf litter from 4 common native plants and 11 mixtures of these litter types were enclosed in three types of nylon mesh screens litterbags, and were placed in the field of throughfall reduction and control treatments replicated five times. Different combination of litter types represent diversity of litters, and mesh size of litterbags represent diversity of functional group of soil biota (i.e., microorganism, medium-sized fauna, large-bodied fauna) participate into decomposition. The litterbags were incubated in situ for a period of time and were collected, all litter samples were separated into the constituent species immediately after litter retrieval, mass loss, C and N loss of each sample was determined. Thereby the hypothesizes can be testified.

How to cite: Luan, J., Liu, S., Li, S., Wang, Y., Lu, H., Zhang, J., Han, S., Wang, H., Chen, L., Zhou, W., and Zhang, Y.: Litter decomposition under drought related with litter and decomposer diversity, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-6297, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-6297, 2020.