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Cited by 553

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 64 of the 64 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Linking litter decomposition of above‐ and below‐ground organs to plant–soil feedbacks worldwide

Open access
Freschet, Grégoire T., Cornwell, William K., Wardle, David A., Elumeeva, Tatyana G., Liu, Wendan, Jackson, Benjamin G., Onipchenko, Vladimir G., Soudzilovskaia, Nadejda A., Tao, Jianping, Cornelissen, Johannes H.C.·2013·Journal of Ecology

Abstract

Summary: Conceptual frameworks relating plant traits to ecosystem processes such as organic matter dynamics are progressively moving from a leaf‐centred to a whole‐plant perspective. Through the use of meta‐analysis and global literature data, we quantified the relative roles of litters from above‐ and below‐ground plant organs in ecosystem labile organic matter dynamics. We found that decomposition rates of leaves, fine roots and fine stems were coordinated across species worldwide although less strongly within ecosystems. We also show that fine roots and stems had lower decomposition rates relative to leaves, with large differences between woody and herbaceous species. Further, we estimated that on average below‐ground litter represents approximately 33 and 48% of annual litter inputs in grasslands and forests, respectively. These results suggest a major role for below‐ground litter as a driver of ecosystem organic matter dynamics. We also suggest that, given that fine stem and fine root litters decompose approximately 1.5 and 2.8 times slower, respectively, than leaf litter derived from the same species, cycling of labile organic matter is likely to be much slower than predicted by data from leaf litter decomposition only. Synthesis. Our results provide evidence that within ecosystems, the relative inputs of above‐ versus below‐ground litter strongly control the overall quality of the litter entering the decomposition system. This in turn determines soil labile organic matter dynamics and associated nutrient release in the ecosystem, which potentially feeds back to the mineral nutrition of plants and therefore plant trait values and plant community composition.

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Crossref · 10.1111/1365-2745.12092

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Metadata

Authors
Freschet, G. T., Cornwell, W. K., Wardle, D. A., Elumeeva, T. G., Liu, W., Jackson, B. G., Onipchenko, V. G., Soudzilovskaia, N. A., Tao, J., & Cornelissen, J. H. C.
Venue
Journal of Ecology
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2013-06-07
Volume
101
Issue
4
Pages
943-952
ISSN
  • 0022-0477 (ISSN-L)
  • 1365-2745
OpenAlex
W2167729521
Cited by
553
References
64
FWCI
45.28
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Linking litter decomposition of above‐ and below‐ground organs to plant–soil feedbacks worldwide. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/1365-2745.12092
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Freschet, G. T., Cornwell, W. K., Wardle, D. A., Elumeeva, T. G., Liu, W., Jackson, B. G., Onipchenko, V. G., Soudzilovskaia, N. A., Tao, J., & Cornelissen, J. H. C. (2013). Linking litter decomposition of above‐ and below‐ground organs to plant–soil feedbacks worldwide. Journal of Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12092

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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