Litter-induced pulses of nutrient availability could play an important role in the productivity and nutrient cycling of forested ecosystems, especially tropical forests. Tropical forests experience such pulses as a result of wet-dry seasonality and during major climatic events, such as strong El Niños. We hypothesized that (1) an increase in the quantity and quality of litter inputs would stimu...

The beneficial effects of blue environments have been well documented; however, we do not know how marine litter might modify these effects. Three studies adopted a picture-rating task to examine the influence of litter on preference, perceived restorative quality, and psychological impacts. Photographs varied the presence of marine litter (Study 1) and the type of litter (Studies 2 and 3). The...

In temperate portions of North America, some bats that remain active during winter undergo short periods of hibernation below leaf litter on the forest floor during episodes of below-freezing weather. These winter roosts may provide above-freezing conditions, but the thermal conditions under leaf litter are unclear. Further, little is known of the relationship between temperatures under litter ...

grazing management plays an important role in the continuous and economicutilization of pastures. proper grazing management is a main factor for the accumulation ofplant litter which reduces soil erosion and increase the soil permeability to keep moremoisture in the soil. in current study, the effect of three different grazing intensities (low,moderate and high) along with the grazing gradient ...

Litter decomposition is an important process in the global carbon cycle. It accounts for most of the heterotrophic soil respiration and results in formation of more stable soil organic carbon (SOC) which is the largest terrestrial carbon stock. Litter decomposition may induce remarkable feedbacks to climate change because it is a climate-dependent process. To investigate the global patterns of ...

In view of growing interest in understanding how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning, we investigated effects of riparian plant diversity on litter decomposition in forest streams. Leaf litter from 10 deciduous tree species was collected during natural leaf fall at two locations (Massif Central in France and Carpathians in Romania) and exposed in the field in litter bags. There were 35 s...

The accumulation of litter or thatch can affect plant community composition by affecting the temperature, nutrient availability, and light availability of the soil environment, thereby forming a potentially important linkage between recent productivity and current ecosystem processes. To investigate the importance of litter on a fen peatland plant community, we conducted a litter addition and r...

1. Understanding relationships between resource and consumer diversity is essential to predicting how changes in resource diversity might affect several trophic levels and overall ecosystem functioning. 2. We tested for the effects of leaf litter species diversity (i.e. litter mixing) on litter mass remaining and macroinvertebrate communities (taxon diversity, abundance and biomass) during brea...

The application of poultry litter to agricultural fields can provide plant nutrients for crops and forage production, but fecal bacteria and the sex hormones estradiol and testosterone are components of litter that can be detrimental to the environment. Our objective was to determine if applications of poultry litter to small watersheds would contribute to the load of fecal bacteria and sex hor...

Surface broadcast of broiler litter to no-till row crops exposes the litter and its nutrients to risks of loss in runoff water and volatilization and may limit the potential benefit of litter to the crops. Subsurface banding of litter could alleviate these risks. A field study was conducted in 2008 and 2009 on an upland Falkner silt loam soil to determine the effect of broiler litter placement ...