Plant traits, litter quality and decomposition in a Mediterranean old-field succession

By J. Cortez, Eric Garnier, N. Pérez‐Harguindeguy, M. Debussche, D. Gillon. Plant and Soil, 2007

115 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Human-induced changes in land use lead to major changes in plant community composition which have strong effects on ecosystem processes. Here, we tested the hypothesis that changes in traits of living plants induced by such changes resulted in changes in the quality and decay properties of the litter produced by the different communities. This was done in the context of a secondary succession following land abandonment in the Mediterranean region of Southern France.During the course of succession, species with high specific leaf area (the ratio of leaf area to leaf mass), low leaf dry matter content (the ratio of leaf dry mass to leaf fresh mass) and high leaf nitrogen concentration were progressively replaced by species with opposite characteristics. Accordingly, the initial litter concentrations of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) decreased, while their C:N ratio and their hemicellulose concentration increased with time after abandonment.Early-successional communities had faster rates of litter decay and N release from litter, but these differences damped out with decomposition time. Nitrogen release from litter was related to initial litter chemical composition, particularly to its N concentration. This also held for litter decay rate, but only during the first 18 months of decomposition.Community functional parameters (i.e. trait values weighed according to the relative abundance of species) were tightly linked to initial litter N concentration, and thereby to litter decay and N loss rates. The strongest correlations were found with leaf dry matter content, which therefore appears as a powerful marker of litter properties. This provides further evidence that characteristics of living leaves persist in litter, and that some ecosystem processes can be inferred from plant functional traits.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3fc95822f290dce6bed5074bdb6fdcc8167edb6

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Citations in the corpus

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…”
Leaf dry matter content as a predictor of grassland litter decomposition: a test of the ‘mass ratio hypothesis’ (2011, background): “It is strongly related to relative growth rate (Vile et al. 2006) and litter decomposition (Cortez et al. 2007) and is part of the worldwide leaf economic spectrum (Wright et al. 2004) that appears to link plant strategies and ecosystem function (Cornwell et al. 2008).”
Plant secondary metabolites: a key driver of litter decomposition and soil nutrient cycling (2016, background): “…may result Cornelissen & Thompson (1997) (+) 0.48 (+) 0.31 In situ Specific Cortez et al. (2007) ( ) 0.66 (+) 0.56 (+) 0.52 In situ CWM Cortez et al. (2007) (+) 0.71 (ns) 0.01 ( ) 0.71 (+) 0.35 In situ Specific Fortunel et al. (2009) ( ) 0.17 (+) 0.10 (ns) 0.02 ( ) 0.09 Microcosm…”
A link between plant traits and abundance: evidence from coastal California woody plants (2010, methodology): “In this analysis, we focus on biomass (Species Biomass Distribution sensu Morlon et al. 2009), which is of special interest because it is the appropriate measure for scaling from plant traits to ecosystem processes (Lavorel & Garnier 2002; Cortez et al. 2007).”
Recovery of plant species composition and ecosystem function after cessation of grazing in a Mediterranean grassland (2010, background): “Lignin is a complex polymer which is highly resistant to decay, and is the main factor controlling the latter stages of plant litter decomposition (Cortez et al. 2007).”
Plant species traits are the predominant control on litter decomposition rates within biomes worldwide. (2008, background): “The magnitude of the differences reported here suggests that shifts in the relative abundance of these already co-existing groups in response to anthropogenic change could have large effects on regional carbon cycles (Garnier et al. 2004; Cortez et al. 2007).”
Leaf economics traits predict litter decomposition of tropical plants and differ among land use types (2011, background): “The nature of this process has been shown for Mediterranean fields (Kazakou et al. 2006; Cortez et al. 2007; Fortunel et al. 2009), but this is, to our knowledge, the first time that it has been analysed for tropical land use types, which are very important in global carbon and local nutrient cycles”
A trait-based approach to comparative functional plant ecology: concepts, methods and applications for agroecology. A review (2012, background): “Whatever the form of the relationship, empirical tests in several situations have shown that CWM of traits involved in the LES tend to scale with community-level decomposition rates (Garnier et al. 2004; Cortez et al. 2007; Quested et al. 2007; Quétier et al. 2007; Fortunel et al. 2009a).”