Björn Berg & Ryszard Laskowski
welcome you to the website on

LITTER DECOMPOSITION:
A GUIDE TO CARBON AND NUTRIENT TURNOVER
 

On this web site you can find material related to our book published with the above title in 2006 by Elsevier as No 38 in their series Advances in Ecological Research. The site contains real experimental data to work with and download as well as some practical advice and solutions to the exercises. We intend to let our data-set grow thanks to cooperation with other scientists working on the topic of litter decomposition. You are welcome to send your comments and suggestions to Ryszard Laskowski who maintains this site.

You can browse through the data sets and exercises using the left-hand side menu. Brief description of the book together with some exercises are given under "The Book" command. The models most commonly used to describe organic matter decomposition in ecosystems are described and presented in the section "Models". Here you can find also an Excel workbook with three different models implemented to let you estimate which of the three models fit your own data best. The "Kraków course" section contains a collection of exercises and real data sets used in the course for graduate and PhD students given by B. Berg at the Jagiellonian University in June 2009.

We hope that the website will promote both education on litter decomposition and cooperation in research. If you would like to use data provided on the web site in your research, you are most welcome but we would be grateful if you get in touch with us first.