Moisture seasonality, soil fauna, litter quality and land use as drivers of decomposition in Cerrado soils in SE-Mato Grosso, Brazil
In Central Brazil, over one million square kilometers of native savanna vegetation known as Cerrado have been cleared and converted to farmland over the past forty years. A factorial experiment was designed to assess the effects of land use, litter type, soil organisms and season on litter decay in the prevailing natural and agricultural systems (i.e. Cerrado remnants, grasslands and soybean croplands) in Mato Grosso. Decay rates were estimated by using the litterbag method.