Five-year study on the effects of warming and plant litter quality on litter decomposition rate in a Tibetan alpine grassland

Abstract

The decomposition of plant litter is a key link in global C budgets and provides strong feedback to changes in climate and biogeochemical cycles. However, the combined effects of global warming and plant litter quality on the rate of plant litter decomposition and nutrient dynamics in alpine ecosystems are still poorly understood. We conducted a warming experiment to investigate the effects of litter quality and temperature on decomposition rates and variations in nutrients of four common herbaceous plants (low-quality litter species Stipa purpurea and Carex moorcroftii and high-quality litter species Astragalus confertus and Leontopodium nanum) during 2011–2016. During the initial stages of decomposition, warming had no significant effect on the mass loss of plant litter for low-quality litter species, but in the later stages of decomposition, it had a negative effect on the mass loss across all species (P < 0.05). Litter quality was the best predictor of N and P release/immobilisation during the decomposition of aboveground plant litter. Low-quality litter had the highest immobilisation of N at about 80% of the initial remaining mass; nutrients were then released in the following stages of decomposition. However, the fraction of initial P decreased with the mass remaining during the initial and later phases of decomposition, but a short period of P immobilisation occurred in the middle phase of decomposition. For high-quality litter, the fraction of initial N and P decreased with the mass remaining during the whole decomposition process. Warming had a marginal influence on the N and P dynamics throughout the decomposition process. Our study showed that the decay of plant litter was strongly suppressed by warming climate and that the N and P dynamics on the investigated Tibetan grassland were mainly regulated by litter quality, providing valuable insights into the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients in alpine ecosystems.