The effects of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) addition on litter decomposition are poorly understood in Tibetan alpine meadows. Leaf litter was collected from plots within a factorial N × P addition experiment and allowed to decompose over 708 days in an unfertilized plot to determine the effects of N and/or P addition on litter decomposition. Results showed that nutrient addition significantl...

Soil water repellency (SWR, i.e. reduced affinity for water owing to the presence of organic hydrophobic coatings on soil particles) has relevant hydrological implications because low rates of infiltration enhance water runoff, and untargeted diffusion of fertilizers and pesticides. Previous studies investigated the occurrence of SWR in ecosystems with different vegetation cover but did not cla...

Leaves intercepted by bromeliads become an important energy and matter resource for invertebrate communities, bacteria, fungi, and the plant itself. The relationship between bromeliad structure, defined as its size and complexity, and accumulated leaf litter was studied in 55 bromeliads of Tillandsia turneri through multiple regression and the Akaike information criterion. Leaf litter accumulat...

On alpine pastureland the decline in large-bodied earthworm numbers and biomass after abandonment of management might be the result of a shift from highly palatable grass litter to poorly digestible leaf litter of dwarf shrubs. To test this hypothesis, we analysed nitrogen, phosphorous and total phenolic contents of fresh and aged litter of eight commonly occuring alpine plant species and compa...

this study investigates the relationship between litter quality and aerial parts of plant on c, n, k, p and c/n ratio of soil in four rangeland species including agropyron intermedium, bromus tomentellus, eurotia ceratoides and kochia prostrata. after recognizing the sites of these species in hamand absard located in 65 km of northern tehran, at the end of growing season, samples of litter, aer...

Seed availability and leaf litter limit plant establishment in some ecosystems. To evaluate the hypothesis that these factors limit understory plant recruitment in Pinus ponderosa forests, I conducted a seeding and litter removal experiment at six thinned sites in the Fort Valley Experimental Forest, northern Arizona. Experimental seeding of four native species (Penstemon virgatus, Erigeron for...

Parasitic plants have major impacts on plant community structure through their direct negative influence on host productivity and competitive ability. However, the possibility that these parasites may also have indirect impacts on community structure (via the mechanism of nutrient-rich litter input) while long hypothesized, has remained unsupported until now. Using the hemiparasite Rhinanthus m...

It is well established that plant species influence ecosystem processes, but we have little ability to predict which vegetation changes will alter ecosystems, or how the effects of a given species might vary seasonally. We established monocultures of eight plant species in a California grassland in order to determine the plant traits that account for species impacts on nitrogen and phosphorus c...

We examined the effects of living plant neighbors and litter on the performance of a native C4 grass, Andropogon gerardi, at five old-field sites that differ in community biomass and soil fertility. We used plant removal experiments in which both living neighbors and litter were manipulated in a factorial arrangement of treatments over one growing season. Andropogon was added to treatment plots...

0169-5347/99/$ – see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved. PII: S0169-5347(98)01505-5 5 significant long-term changes in nutrient mineralization, which causes major and often unexpected changes in plant species composition. Combined with Foster and Gross’s observation about the strong effects of litter on plant species establishment, these results imply that litter producti...