⚙
AI-generated deep summary
by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-03
· read from full text
ⓘ
The preprint studies how combined warming and rainfall reduction affect decomposition of tree leaf litter from eight boreal and temperate tree species using the B4warmED in situ experiment, and it also tests whether growing under warmed conditions changes litter decomposition when transplanted into different temperature/moisture environments. The authors report that warming plus rainfall reduction increased litter half-life by about 42% relative to ambient conditions, while rainfall reduction alone increased mean residence time by about 37%; in the trait/transplant component, warm-grown litter decomposed faster under ambient temperatures but showed slower, yet equal, decomposition rates compared with ambient-grown litter under warmed environments. A key caveat stated is that the results emphasize sensitivity to temperature and the limitation of decomposition studies that use only ambient-grown litter, and the preprint is not peer reviewed. This paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.
Abstract
Plant litter decomposition is a primary control on carbon fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems around the world. Individually, the key mediators of decomposition rates—litter traits, temperature, and moisture—are relatively well understood. However, our understanding of how combined drivers influence decomposition remains limited. To test how multiple, interactive climate change factors directly alter decomposition rates and indirectly influence leaf litter decomposition rates by altering substrate chemistry, we conducted two decomposition experiments within the Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in Danger (B4WarmED) study in Minnesota, USA. Our first experiment decomposed ambient-grown leaf litter from eight common tree species under a factorial combination of warming and rainfall reduction treatments. We found that the direct effects of combined warming and rainfall reduction increased litter half-life by 42% ± 11% in comparison to ambient plots with no warming or rainfall reduction. In contrast, only rainfall reduction influenced litter mean residence time, which increased by 37% ± 18% in comparison to ambient rainfall plots. Our second experiment decomposed ambient- and warm-grown leaf litter from the same eight species under ambient and warmed conditions. We found that warming slowed decomposition of both litter types, but warm-grown litter had a 22% ± 6.5% shorter half-life than ambient-grown leaf tissue under ambient environmental conditions. Warm grown litter half-life then increased by 36% ± 11% with warmed environmental conditions. Our results highlight that climate change could slow carbon and nutrient cycling in systems where moisture becomes a limiting factor. In addition, our study demonstrates that there may be an overlooked relationship between the growth conditions of plants and the temperature of decomposition. This nuanced understanding of decomposition can then support carbon cycling models and more effective nature-based climate mitigation efforts.
Full text
2,804 characters
· extracted from
oa-doi-fallback
· click to expand
This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint.
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.
This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint.
Add a Comment
You must log in to post a comment.
Comments
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.
Plant litter decomposition is a primary control on terrestrial carbon fluxes and is critical to soil temperature, fauna, and nutrients, among many other biotic and abiotic factors. Individually, the key mediators of decomposition—litter traits, temperature, and moisture—are relatively well understood. However, our understanding of how combined climate drivers influence decomposition remains limited, as in situ experiments testing how combined warming and rainfall reduction impact decomposition are rare. Additionally, despite our knowledge that warming temperatures can alter leaf traits, few studies test how changes in leaf traits with increasing temperature can then influence decomposition. To this end, using the Boreal Forest at an Ecotone in Danger (B4warmED) experiment, we tested how warming and rainfall reduction impact the decomposition of leaf litter from eight boreal and temperate tree species. We found that combined warming and rainfall reduction increased litter half-life by 42% ± 11% in comparison to litter exposed to ambient climatic conditions. However, only rainfall reduction increased litter mean residence time by 37% ± 18% in comparison to ambient rainfall plots. We also tested how leaf litter grown in ambient and warmed growing conditions decomposed when transplanted into ambient and warmed environments. We found that warm-grown litter had a 22.4% ± 6.5% lower half life than ambient grown litter under ambient temperatures. Ambient-grown and warm-grown litter had slower, but equal decomposition rates in warmed environments. Our research indicates that climate change may slow carbon cycling in systems where moisture becomes a limiting factor. Additionally, our finding that warm-grown litter decomposition is more sensitive to temperature highlights a key limitation of many decomposition studies that only use ambient-grown litter. This result also points to a new ecological knowledge gap with ramifications for carbon modeling under global change.
https://doi.org/10.32942/X26Q0Q
Life Sciences
decomposition, Warming, Precipitation, plant traits, temperate-boreal forest, Carbon cycling, climate change, B4WarmED
Published: 2025-05-12 05:50
Last Updated: 2025-11-13 19:38
CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Data and Code Availability Statement:
Data and code will be available upon publication.
Language:
English
Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below.
Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure
cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can
have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy
(via DOI)
is the canonical version.