Disturbance can slow down litter decomposition, depending on severity of disturbance and season: an example from Mount Kilimanjaro

Röder, Juliane; Appelhans, Tim; Peters, Marcell K.; Nauss, Thomas; Brandl, Roland

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/we-24-11-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/we-24-11-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/we-24-11-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 1

Standard article

|

23 Feb 2024

Standard article |

| 23 Feb 2024

Disturbance can slow down litter decomposition, depending on severity of disturbance and season: an example from Mount Kilimanjaro

Juliane Röder, Tim Appelhans, Marcell K. Peters, Thomas Nauss, and Roland Brandl

Data sets

Processed climate station data for the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania Tim Appelhans, Ephraim Mwangomo, Insa Otte, Florian Detsch, Stephan Wöllauer, Dirk Zeuss, Thomas Nauss, and Andreas Hemp https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.942822

Raw litter decomposition data 105 from five elevational transects on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania Juliane Röder and Roland Brandl https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.964727

Short summary

We studied rates of litter decomposition in natural and disturbed vegetation on elevation gradients of Mount Kilimanjaro to disentangle effects of climate and disturbance. Decomposition was slower in disturbed than in natural forests, but we did not find a negative effect of disturbance for non-forest vegetation. Decomposition slowed down with increasing land-use intensity, but only in the warm wet season. Temperature and humidity were the most important drivers of decomposition in all analyses.