Dear all,
May I invite you to join an interesting project that studies decomposition on a global scale. Together with collaborators of Utrecht University, The Netherlands Institute of Ecology and Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, we developed a method that enables measuring decomposition rates in an extremely cheap and easy way (Keuskamp et al 2013, see download link below this message). The method consists of burying tea bags, and dig them up again after 3 months. As tea is plant material, teabags (those that are sold in plastic mesh bags) are basically standardized litterbags. Moreover, because we use two types of tea, we can characterize two different attributes of the decomposition process (initial decomposition rate and stabilization of the labile fraction). We are currently looking for people that want to dig down tea for us, both on a small scale (a few bags in a few locations) and on a large scale (many locations). With this data we want to construct a global decomposition map, that can for instance be used as input for climate models. We will provide tea for those who like to give a small contribution to this project, whereas contributors with significantly large datasets can apply for co-authorship and are asked to obtain tea themselves. More details on participation can be found in the invitation document that you can download via the wetransfer link https://we.tl/wCyocAlH1F. If the link does not work, please contact me and I will send you the documents in a private mail. With kind regards, Judith Sarneel For a paper describing the method and details of participation click: https://we.tl/wCyocAlH1F If you already received this request via other ways, I apologize for cross-posting. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judith Sarneel - Post doc - Landscape ecology - Umeå University - judith.sarn...@emg.umu.se<mailto:judith.sarn...@emg.umu.se> Uminova Science Park, plan 3, Tvistevägen 48, Umeå More info on: Personal profile: http://www.emg.umu.se/om-institutionen/personal/sarneel-judith The LIFE project: http://vindelriverlife.se/ The Tea bag project: http://www.decolab.org/tbi/
