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Forests
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Forest Litter Decomposition: An Integrative Approach
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Forest Litter Decomposition: An Integrative Approach

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecophysiology and Biology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 February 2021) | Viewed by 11429

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Antonietta Fioretto

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Guest Editor
Department of Environmental, Biological, and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Via Vivaldi 43, 81100 Caserta, Italy
Interests: carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical cycles; crassulacean acid metabolism plants; litter decomposition; Mediterranean forests; soil quality; soil under stress
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Michele Innangi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environmental, Biological, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Via Vivaldi 43, 81100 Caserta, Italy
Interests: ecological modelling; environmental botany; morphometrics; mountain forests; soil biological activity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In a world that is facing unprecedented changes, most of which can be linked to human activities, understanding the complex interactions in ecological processes appears to bepivotal. In particular, those ecological processes that are linked to the global carbon cycle need special attention. Accordingly, litter decomposition, as an ecological process that can be seen as the opposite plate of the balance with plant primary productivity, remains one of the most interesting topics in terrestrial ecology. Forests, given their extensive carbon stock in living and dead organic matter both above and below ground, play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle, and they are also biodiversity reserves. Under a changing climate and in the face of increasing human pressure, we need to further understand how litter decomposition in forest ecosystems could respond to such stresses. Such an understanding must be achieved with a systemic approach, thus trying to apply integrative methods that could help us with modelling the interrelating biological and abiotic drivers of litter decomposition. As a matter of fact, it is known that litter decomposition is affected mostly by three interacting factors, that is, climate, litter quality, and soil biota, including both true decomposers (fungi and bacteria) and soil fauna.

This Special Issue aims to provide novel research that could help the scientific community in understanding how litter decomposition works, and how it responds to human-driven stresses, with a focus on integrative studies that might consider both biotic and abiotic factors. Litter decomposition studies related to topics such as climate-driven changes in forest tree and understory compositions, alteration in freeze–thaw cycles, tree-line shifts, abiotic degradation (e.g., photodegradation), forest management, biodiversity loss in soil biota, litter traits, chemical ecology, and soil extracellular enzymes are highly welcome. In addition, we encourage the use of state-of-the-art statistical techniques with a systemic modelling purpose, such as structural equation modelling, mixed effect models, non-metric multidimensional scaling, partial least squares-related models, co-inertia analysis, and similar methods.

Prof. Dr. Antonietta Fioretto
Dr. Michele Innangi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Biological interactions
  • Biotic and abiotic factors
  • Decomposition under stresses
  • Ecological modelling
  • Systemic approach.

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 2100 KiB  
Article
Comparative Dynamics of Above-Ground Litter Production and Decomposition from Eucalyptus grandis Hill ex Maiden and Pinus taeda L., and Their Contribution to Soil Organic Carbon
by Andrés Baietto, Jorge Hernández and Amabelia del Pino
Forests 2021, 12(3), 349; https://doi.org/10.3390/f12030349 - 16 Mar 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3093
Abstract
The replacement of native pasture by exotic commercial forest species is an infrequent situation worldwide. In these systems, a new component is introduced, forest litter, which constitutes one of the main ways of incorporating carbon into the soil–plant system. The present work seeks [...] Read more.
The replacement of native pasture by exotic commercial forest species is an infrequent situation worldwide. In these systems, a new component is introduced, forest litter, which constitutes one of the main ways of incorporating carbon into the soil–plant system. The present work seeks to establish a methodological approach to study the dynamics of litter production and decomposition in an integrated way. The general objective was to characterize and compare the litter production dynamics in 14-year-old Eucalyptus grandis Hill ex Maiden and Pinus taeda L. commercial plantations. During two years, seasonal evaluations of fall, decomposition and accumulation of litter were carried out in stands of both species. In turn, the contribution of carbon from forest species to the soil through isotopic analysis techniques was quantified. Litterfall in E. grandis showed maximums during the spring of the first year and in the spring and summer of the second. In P. taeda, the maximums occurred in summer of the first year and in autumn of the second. In relation to the decomposition rate, the results based on short periods of evaluation between 15 and 21 months did not show differences between species, nor for the different moments of beginning of the evaluation, obtaining average values of 0.0369 month−1 for E. grandis and 0.0357 month−1 for P. taeda. In turn, both the decomposition rate of the material as a whole and the estimates of accumulated biomass in equilibrium state did not show significant differences between the species. Additionally, there was a relevant incorporation of carbon into the soil by forest species, fundamentally in the first few centimeters, substituting an important proportion of the carbon inherited by the original cover of native pastures. Finally, it is necessary to specify that the scope of the findings obtained is greatly limited by the sample size used in this study. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forest Litter Decomposition: An Integrative Approach)
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13 pages, 1553 KiB  
Article
Fast Spectrophotometric Method as Alternative for CuO Oxidation to Assess Lignin in Soils with Different Tree Cover
by Tiziana Danise, Michele Innangi, Elena Curcio, Antonietta Fioretto and Georg Guggenberger
Forests 2020, 11(12), 1262; https://doi.org/10.3390/f11121262 - 27 Nov 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2279
Abstract
Given the ongoing climate change, estimating the amount of less degradable plant compounds that can be stored in the soil, such as lignin, is a topic of primary importance. There are few methods applicable to soils for the determination of lignin, such as [...] Read more.
Given the ongoing climate change, estimating the amount of less degradable plant compounds that can be stored in the soil, such as lignin, is a topic of primary importance. There are few methods applicable to soils for the determination of lignin, such as the copper oxide (CuO) oxidation method (CuOL). Acetyl bromide spectrophotometric lignin (ABSL) could be a valid alternative providing information that is less detailed compared to CuOL, but it offers data on the bulk amount of lignin and may offer a valid, fast, and cheap alternative to the CuO method. The aim of this work was to compare ABSL with the CuO method on several soils receiving plant residues from different trees. Mineral soil samples from 0 to 10 cm depth were obtained from a former agricultural site in northern Italy (Brusciana, Tuscany), where different tree plantations were established 22 years ago. The plantations were white poplar and common walnut, which were also intercropped with other species such as hazelnut, Italian alder, and autumn olive. Soil samples under these plantations were also compared to soil under an adjacent agricultural field. In general, the amount of lignin in the afforested stands was approximately double than in the agricultural field as determined by either method. The two methods returned a largely different scale of values due to their different mechanisms of action. The acid-to-aldehyde ratio of syringyl structural units highlights that forest plantation provides a plant input material that is more slowly oxidatively degraded compared to arable soil. A linear mixed model proved that ABSL performed well in relation to CuOL, especially when considering the random variation in the model given by the plantation field design. In conclusion, ABSL can be considered a valid proxy of soil C pool derived from structural plant component, although further analyses are needed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forest Litter Decomposition: An Integrative Approach)
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15 pages, 2195 KiB  
Article
Presence of Mycorrhizal Fungal Hyphae Rather than Living Roots Retards Root Litter Decomposition
by Guigang Lin, Zhengxia Chen and De-Hui Zeng
Forests 2019, 10(6), 502; https://doi.org/10.3390/f10060502 - 13 Jun 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4434
Abstract
Although both living roots and mycorrhizal fungi are well known to interact with saprotrophic microbes to affect litter decomposition, their relative importance is largely unclear. Here, a two-year pot experiment was conducted with two ectomycorrhizal (Pinus elliottii and Pinus massoniana) and [...] Read more.
Although both living roots and mycorrhizal fungi are well known to interact with saprotrophic microbes to affect litter decomposition, their relative importance is largely unclear. Here, a two-year pot experiment was conducted with two ectomycorrhizal (Pinus elliottii and Pinus massoniana) and four arbuscular mycorrhizal (Cinnamomum camphora, Cunninghamia lanceolata, Michelia maudiae and Schima superba) subtropical tree species to evaluate the relative effects of living roots and mycorrhizal fungal hyphae on their own root litter decomposition and to test whether these effects differed between ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal trees. To achieve these objectives, litterbags with 50-µm and 1-mm mesh sizes filled with root litter of a given tree species were simultaneously installed in pots planted with the same species and unplanted pots filled with composite soil for all species. Effects of living roots alone were calculated as differences in root litter decomposition between 50-µm and 1-mm mesh litterbags installed in planted pots. Mycorrhizal hyphal effects were calculated as differences in root litter decomposition between 50-µm litterbags installed in planted and unplanted pots. The presence of mycorrhizal fungal hyphae significantly reduced root litter mass loss and inhibited the activities of β-glucosidase and phenol oxidase, while effects of living roots alone were non-significant when all tree species were pooled and inconsistent at the tree species level. Mycorrhizal fungal hyphae induced decreases in root litter mass loss that were markedly related to their inhibitory effects on β-glucosidase and phenol oxidase activities. When tree species were grouped by their mycorrhizal types, non-significant differences were observed between ectomycorrhizal and arbuscular mycorrhizal trees in their living root or mycorrhizal fungal effects on root litter decomposition. These findings highlight the important roles of mycorrhizal fungi in mediating litter decomposition via interacting with saprotrophic microbes and suggest that changes in tree carbon allocation to mycorrhizal fungi owing to global change may affect soil carbon storage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forest Litter Decomposition: An Integrative Approach)
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