Professor Wu Fuzhong's research team from the School of Geographical Sciences and the School of Carbon Neutrality Future Technology at Fujian Normal University has made significant progress in understanding the carbon cycle. Their research, based on over a decade of continuous litter decomposition monitoring, has led to the creation of a comprehensive global litter decomposition dataset. This dataset includes 6,733 independent observations from 1,432 terrestrial sites worldwide.
The team successfully clarified litter decomposition rates across various climate zones, ecosystems, and vegetation types. Using machine learning techniques, they analyzed the contributions of both substrate and climate to these rates and predicted litter decomposition patterns in global terrestrial ecosystems under future climate change scenarios. Their study, titled "Substrate and Climate Determine Terrestrial Litter Decomposition," was published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Fujian Normal University is the primary affiliation for this paper, with Wu Qiuxia, a doctoral student enrolled in 2022, as the first author, and Researcher Ni Xiangyin and Professor Wu Fuzhong as the corresponding authors. The research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program for Young Scientists, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and the Mathematics-Ecology Interdisciplinary Team Project of Fujian Normal University.
Litter decomposition is a vital process that returns a portion of plant photosynthetic products to the atmosphere while retaining another fraction in soil organic matter. It plays a crucial role in carbon fluxes and nutrient cycling on Earth’s surface. Accurately assessing litter decomposition rates and their regulatory mechanisms provides essential parameters for predicting ecosystem carbon storage and fluxes. These predictions are critical for understanding carbon exchange processes and carbon budgets among the pedosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere, thereby influencing the carbon-climate feedback within Earth’s surface system.
For more details, the full paper can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420664122
（Translated by Yan Jiaxu, Reviewed by Hu Wen）