Dear Colleagues, We are excited to announce our session in the upcoming AGU annual meeting (15-19 December 2014, San Francisco), titled Re-evaluating the Concept of Recalcitrance During Plant Litter Decomposition.
Recalcitrance is a term that many biogeoscientists use to describe the sensitivity or resistance of organic matter against decomposition processes. It is commonly thought that recalcitrance is an intrinsic characteristic of a compound defined by its molecular properties. For example, lignin is generally considered highly undecomposable. As a corollary, decomposition models treat decomposition rates as substrate properties based on substrate "quality" or "inherent resistance" to decomposition. But is any organic compound really able to "resist" decomposition? Or are organic molecular properties merely a factor determining the magnitude of the catabolic effort needed allowing the decomposition of "recalcitrant" materials to proceed fast once appropriate resources are made available? In our session, we ask the question, how effective or useful is the concept of recalcitrance in understanding plant litter decomposition? We hope to address this question by welcoming oral and poster presentations using various approaches, from field experiments to new analytical techniques to ecosystem modeling. Please join us! To submit an abstract to our session, please use the following link:https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm14/webprogrampreliminary/Session3430.html The abstract submission deadline is August 6th, 2014, 23:59 EDT/03:59 +1 GMT. If you have any questions about our session or abstract submission, please feel free to contact us: Yang Lin ([email protected]). Please pass this announcement to any others who might be interested. Thanks, Yang Lin and Jennifer King University of California, Santa Barbara Erika Marín-Spiotta University of Wisconsin, Madison Markus Kleber Oregon State University
