Soil nutrient concentrations decreased in an aggrading southern Appalachian forest over a 20-year period. Construction of nutrient budgets showed significant nutrient sequestration aboveground including increased forest floor mass. We hypothesized that the changes in forest floor mass resulted from decreased litter decomposition rates because of decreased litter quality. In 1992 and 1993, we re...

We investigated how altitude affects the decomposition of leaf and root litter in the Andean tropical montane rainforest of southern Ecuador, that is, through changes in the litter quality between altitudes or other site-specific differences in microenvironmental conditions. Leaf litter from three abundant tree species and roots of different diameter from sites at 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 m were...

................................................................................................................................................................ 2 Background............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Bellevue Catchbasin Monitoring Study................................

The replacement of native forests by exotic tree monocultures, such as those of Eucalyptus, decreases the quality of leaf litter inputs to streams and often reduces riparian cover, which can elevate water temperature. The combined effects of these stressors on the survival and performance of detritivores may be important, as detritivore species loss leads to reduced litter breakdown, a key ecos...

an experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of chemical amendments and reused litter on broiler performances, immune response and skin quality. five hundred and seventy six (576) day old broiler chickens were randomly allocated to 3x2 factorial design experiment. three amendments treatment included control (no chemical addition), alunminum sulfate and zeolite; two types of litter were ne...

There is evidence that anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition enhances carbon (C) sequestration in boreal soils. However, key underlying mechanisms explaining this increase have not been resolved. Two potentially important mechanisms are that aboveground litter production increases, or that litter quality changes in response to N enrichment. As such, our aim was to quantify whether simulated chr...

Biogeosciences Discussions This discussion paper is/has been under review for the journal Biogeosciences (BG). Please refer to the corresponding final paper in BG if available. Abstract In initial ecosystems concentrations of all macro-and micronutrients can be considered as extremely low. Plant litter therefore strongly influences the development of a degraders' food web and is an important so...

The total phenol content in decomposing litter not only acts as a crucial litter quality indicator, but is also closely related to litter humification due to its tight absorption to clay particles. However, limited attention has been focused on the total phenol dynamics in foliar litter in relation to forest gaps. Here, the foliar litter of six representative tree species was incubated on the f...