Sentences with word «litterfall»

Open top chambers simulate future warming of soil and plants caused by climate change, and leaf litter is added to simulate enhanced litterfall caused by expansion of birch trees and willow shrubs (Photo: Anders Michelsen)

Open top chambers simulate future warming of soil and plants caused by climate change, and leaf litter is added to simulate enhanced litterfall caused by expansion of birch trees and willow shrubs.

In response, nutrients were locked up in the damaged portions of these leaves forcing them to stay suspended in tree canopies for extended periods of time instead of falling with customary litterfall to enter the soil nutrient cycling process.

«Our results show that the uncertainty estimates of greenhouse gas inventories depend on the calculation method and on how the input data for the model, such as weather and litterfall data, have been averaged,» says Aleksi Lehtonen, researcher at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).

Although leaf uptake removes mercury from air, autumn litterfall transfers the sequestered mercury to soils.

A new study shows that as climate change enhances tree growth in tropical forests, the resulting increase in litterfall could stimulate soil micro-organisms leading to a release of stored soil carbon.

These detritivores consume the litterfall of dead leaves and twigs, altering nutrient cycles and exposing the soil to erosion.

«We thought that early drought stress would show up first in leaves — that leaf area would decrease significantly and that litterfall would increase as leaves died and dropped off the trees,» said Nepstad.