Climatic controls on leaf litter decomposition across European forests and  grasslands revealed by reciprocal litter transplantation experiments

Portillo-Estrada, Miguel; Pihlatie, Mari; Korhonen, Janne F. J.; Levula, Janne; Frumau, Arnoud K. F.; Ibrom, Andreas; Lembrechts, Jonas J.; Morillas, Lourdes; Horváth, László; Jones, Stephanie K.; Niinemets, Ülo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-1621-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-1621-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-1621-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 5

Research article

|

16 Mar 2016

Research article |

| 16 Mar 2016

Climatic controls on leaf litter decomposition across European forests and grasslands revealed by reciprocal litter transplantation experiments

Miguel Portillo-Estrada, Mari Pihlatie, Janne F. J. Korhonen, Janne Levula, Arnoud K. F. Frumau, Andreas Ibrom, Jonas J. Lembrechts, Lourdes Morillas, László Horváth, Stephanie K. Jones, and Ülo Niinemets

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Mar 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Nov 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C8376: 'short comment bg-2015-512', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Dec 2015
- AC C8441: 'Response to the reviewer', Miguel Portillo-Estrada, 11 Dec 2015
RC C8755: 'Comments and review from Referee #2', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Dec 2015
- AC C9337: 'Thank you for your review', Miguel Portillo-Estrada, 22 Jan 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (11 Jan 2016) by Alexey V. Eliseev

AR by Miguel Portillo-Estrada on behalf of the Authors (29 Feb 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (07 Mar 2016) by Alexey V. Eliseev

AR by Miguel Portillo-Estrada on behalf of the Authors (07 Mar 2016)

Short summary

We studied tree and grass litter decomposition across several climates in Europe. Climatic (air temperature, precipitation and soil water content) controls on litter decomposition were quantitatively more important than species or site of origin. The data were used to generate prediction models of remaining litter mass, and carbon and nitrogen contents during the decomposition period. We also observed a significant drop in remaining litter mass after the first couple of days of decomposition.