Regional variation in deadwood decay of 13 tree species: Effects of climate, soil and forest structure

Deadwood provides important ecological and biogeochemical functions in forest ecosystems. These functions rely on tree species-specific decay dynamics, but only few studies investigated how exogenous parameters affected the decay of deadwood at the regional scale. Here, we explore the influence of climate, soil traits and forest structure on decay dynamics and mass loss of logs of 13 tree species in 29 plots across three regions in Germany. This long-term experiment (BELongDead) comprises 1,066 logs of 9 angiosperms and 4 gymnosperms and covers a decay time of almost 10 years. Mass loss of logs was relatively high for the temperate climate with partly different half-lives ranging from 6 to 13 years (mean 8.9 ± 2.2 years). Diffuse-porous angiosperms lost 70 ± 13 % of their initial mass, followed by gymnosperms (49 ± 16 %) and ring-porous angiosperms (46 ± 12 %) within the study period. We applied three different mathematical models to fit mass loss in time and found that a linear model is most appropriate for 10 tree species. A sigmoidal model best described the mass loss of Fraxinus, Quercus and Pinus logs. A multivariate analysis revealed a significant effect of soil, temperature and precipitation on mass loss at the plot level. Mass loss increased with decreasing soil nutrient content, possibly as a result of enhanced bidirectional element translocations between nutrient-poor soils and logs by fungal hyphae. Temperature had a positive effect on mass loss, whereas increasing precipitation and soil moisture were negatively related to mass loss. The region with warmer, moderately humid climate and unfavourable soil properties led to overall higher mass loss (66 ± 4 %) whereas the other two regions were indifferent (both 57 ± 3 %). Forest structure, including canopy cover, share of coniferous trees and the stock of deadwood in the vicinity of the logs explained only a small part of the variability in mass loss. High variability within individual tree species suggests that other factors such as organismic diversity and microbial activity have stronger impact on the decay process at the regional scale than exogenous factors.