Plant species traits are the predominant control on litter decomposition rates within biomes worldwide.

By Will K. Cornwell, J. H. C. Cornelissen, K. Amatangelo, E. Dorrepaal, V. Eviner, Ó. Godoy, S. Hobbie, B. Hoorens, H. Kurokawa, N. Pérez‐Harguindeguy and 20 more. Ecology Letters, 2008

2,223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc11bbf5da3852a84451ba51f22a28ced983dd85

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Citations in the corpus

Global relationship of wood and leaf litter decomposability: the role of functional traits within and across plant organs (2014, background): “Within biomes, plant functional traits, particularly those associated with plant strategies for resource acquisition or defence, explain much of the residual variation in decomposition rates (Chambers et al., 2000; Cornwell et al., 2008; Weedon et al., 2009).”
Decomposition of the finest root branching orders: linking belowground dynamics to fine-root function and structure (2011, result): “:P ratios decomposed faster than [1 þ 2 B] roots with lower values of these ratios in three of four species, which is in contrast to past syntheses of leaf litter decomposition (Cornwell et al. 2008).”
Plant traits and wood fates across the globe: rotted, burned, or consumed? (2009, neutral): “A growing body of literature suggests that plant traits have predictable, long-term effects on ecosystem processes, especially ‘afterlife’ effects on litter decomposition (Hobbie, 1996; Allison & Vitousek, 2004; Cornelissen et al., 2007; Cornwell et al., 2008).”
Correlations among leaf traits provide a significant constraint on the estimate of global gross primary production (2012, background): “There is an increasing trend towards firmly establishing at regional to global scales the general relationships among key functional traits of plants [e.g., Reich et al., 1997; Wright et al., 2004; Cornwell et al., 2008, 2009; Chave et al., 2009].”
A global method for calculating plant CSR ecological strategies applied across biomes world‐wide (2017, background): “For instance, plant resource economics is a particularly important determinant of photosynthetic carbon fixation, biomass production, litter decomposition and thus ecosystem nutrient availabilities (Grime et al. 1997; Wright et al. 2004; Cornwell et al. 2008; Reich 2014).”
A link between plant traits and abundance: evidence from coastal California woody plants (2010, background): “Secondly, these data will inform the effort to scale from plant traits to ecosystem processes (Cortez et al. 2007; Cornwell et al. 2008; Suding et al. 2008).”
Evolutionary Legacy Effects on Ecosystems: Biogeographic Origins, Plant Traits, and Implications for Management in the Era of Global Change (2016, background): “Leaf lifespan, nutrient concentrations, and defense chemistry are well-known to influence litter quality and decomposition rates (e.g., Cornwell et al. 2008, Hobbie et al. 2006).”
Plant root traits affecting the resistance of soils to concentrated flow erosion (2012, methodology): “This approach has been used to determine plant traits that control litter decomposition rates (e.g. Cortez et al., 2007; Cornwell et al., 2008), primary productivity (e.g. Pontes et al., 2007) or nitrogen cycling (e.g. Craine et al., 2002) but can be generalized to other ecological processes…”
Plasticity in leaf and stem nutrient resorption proficiency potentially reinforces plant–soil feedbacks and microscale heterogeneity in a semi‐arid grassland (2012, background): “As litter quality is the predominant driver of litter decomposition rates (Cornwell et al. 2008), herbaceous stem litter, with lower N content and more structural compounds, should have slower decomposition rates than leaves (G. T. Freschet, R. Aerts & J. H. C. Cornelissen, unpubl. data).”