Observation and Quantification of Seasonal C/N/P Dynamics during Litter Decomposition in a Watershed Ecosystem
Abstract
Litter decomposition is one of the most important ecological processes in the watershed ecosystem. We will report the observation and quantification of seasonal C/N/P dynamics during a controlled litter decomposition experiment at a lower montane hillslope site in a mountainous watershed system at the upper Colorado River basin where water from snowmelt mediates a large number of hydrologic-biogeochemical reactions across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
We deployed litter bags at the site and followed up with a one-year study, during which we monitor at real time the temperature and moisture content, collected samples for chemical analyses at 4 seasonal time points including the snowfall, snowmelt, summer, and fall seasons. We observed different decomposition rates of litters from five species according to their dry mass loss data. We used elemental analysis to quantify the elemental changes over the seasons. Using FTIR spectroscopy, we observed significant changes of signatures related to amide, polysaccharides, cellulose and lignin in the litter samples collected at 4 different time points. Together we were able to quantify the C/N/P dynamics during the litter decomposition in our controlled experiment in order to provide key parameters to enable mechanistic modeling of this large scale ecosystem.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B51H2339H
- Keywords:
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- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0480 Remote sensing;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1910 Data assimilation;
- integration and fusion;
- INFORMATICS