Litter mass loss rates in pine forests of Europe and Eastern United States:some relationships with climate and litter quality

• Published in: Biogeochemistry
• Main Authors: Berg, B., Berg, M. P., Bottner, P., Box, E., Breymeyer, A., de Anta, R. Ca, Couteaux, M., Escudero, A., Gallardo, A., Kratz, W., Madeira, M., Mälkönen, E., McClaugherty, C., Meentemeyer, V., Muñoz, F., Piussi, P., Remacle, J., de Santo, A. Vi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 1993
• Subjects: actual evapotranspiration; climate; climate change; decomposition; litter mass loss; pine; /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_below_water; name=SDG 14 - Life Below Water; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/afbf4d21-9f7d-4b08-a737-18c4cbedd726; https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00000785; https://hdl.handle.net/1871.1/afbf4d21-9f7d-4b08-a737-18c4cbedd726; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0027869930&partnerID=8YFLogxK; http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0027869930&partnerID=8YFLogxK

The purpose of this study was to relate regional variation in litter mass-loss rates (first year) in pine forests to climate across a large, continental-scale area. The variation in mass-loss rate was analyzed using 39 experimental sites spanning climatic regions from the subarctic to subtropical and Mediterranean: the latitudinal gradient ranged from 31 °N to 70 °N and may represent the the largest geographical area that has ever been sampled and observed for the purpose of studying biogeochemical processes. Because of unified site design and uniform laboratory procedures, data from all sites were directly comparable and permitted a determination of the relative influence of climate versus substrate quality viewed from the perspective of broad regional scales. Simple correlation applied to the entire data set indicated that annual actual evapotranspiration (AET) should be the leading climatic constraint on mass-loss rates (R adj 2 = 0.496). The combination of AET, average July temp. and average annual temp. could explain about 70% of the sites' variability on litter mass-loss. In an analysis of 23 Scots pine sites north of the Alps and Carpatians AET alone could account for about 65% of the variation and the addition of a substrate-quality variable was sufficiently significant to be used in a model. The influence of litter quality was introduced into a model, using data from 11 sites at which litter of different quality had been incubated. These sites are found in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland. At any one site most ( ≫ 90%) of the variation in mass-loss rates could be explained by one of the litter-quality variables giving concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus or water solubles. However, even when these models included nitrogen or phosphorus even small changes in potential evapotranspiration resulted in large changes in early-phase decay rates. Further regional subdivision of the data set, resulted in a range of strength in the relationship between loss rate and climatic variables, from very weak ...