What controls forest litter decomposition? A coordinated distributed teabag experiment across ten mountains

Litter decomposition in mountainous forest ecosystems is an essential process that affects carbon and nutrient cycling. However, the contribution of litter decomposition to terrestrial ecosystems is difficult to estimate accurately because of the limited comparability of different studies and limited data on local microclimatic and non-climatic factors. Here, we designed a coordinated experiment within subtropical and tropical forests across ten mountains to evaluate variation in litter decomposition rates and stabilization. We tested whether elevations, soil microclimate, soil physiochemistry, tree species diversity, and microhabitat affect decomposition rates and stabilization by using the Tea Bag Index as a standardized protocol. We found that the associations of decomposition rates and stabilization with elevation and each environmental factor varied between mountains. Elevation significantly affected decomposition rates and stabilization in the western mountains, where soil microcl..., Environmental data and litter decomposition data were collected from a coordinated experiment across ten mountains in the tropical and subtropical regions of China. We used standardized litter bags \"red tea\" and \"green tea\" as decomposing materials. The calculated Tea bag index included decomposition rate (k) and stabilization (S). We modeled k and S on the function of each environmental variable or multiple variables depending on the research hypotheses., , # Environmental data and decomposition index

Author/Principal Investigator Information
Name: Shiyu Ma
ORCID: [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1116-4812](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1116-4812)
Institution: East China Normal University
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])
Date of data collection: 2021-05-01 to 2021-09-30
Geographic location of data collection: Tropical and subtropical regions of China
Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: National Science Foundation of China

DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

File List: all.dat.csv, R script_Figure2.R, R script_Figure3_4.R, R script_Figure5_6.R

all.dat.csv includes the metadata of each subplot, the ten environmental factors, and focal response variables (decomposition rate-K and stabilization-S).

The three R scripts are code for statistical analyses and visualization of Figures 2, 3-4, and 5-6.

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: all.dat.csv

This data file contains 16 column...