Leaf litter decomposition of two agroforestry systems in the Cerrado Sul-Mato-Grossense

Abstract

One of the important indicators for an ecosystem is litter because it provides nutrients and organic matter that are essential to the functioning of the environment. Thus, the objective was to evaluate the leaf decomposition rate of the litter and to correlate it with meteorological indices in two areas with agroforestry systems (SAF1) formed by several plant species and (SAF2) formed by Heveiculture and pineapple, a cerrado region in the municipality of Pedro Gomes, MS. For evaluation of  litter decomposition leaves of the forest floor surface were collected from the study areas, and transferred to the oven dried at 65 ºC for a 96 hours. They were later weighed 10-gram fractions   and inserted into litterbags. Were allocated 20 litterbags to each study area and samples were taken at 30, 60, 90 and 120 days, with 5 samples per area and time evaluated. The remaining leaf mass of the litter bags, the half-life (t ½) and the decomposition constant (k) were estimated. Subsequently, Pearson's correlation (r) between climatic variables and (k). leaf mass loss was higher in the SAF 2 area, and both areas temperature and precipitation influenced the litter decomposition.