Recently I have been ruminating on the significance of litter-free zones that open up in temperate systems as a consequence of the accelerated decomposition of invasive leaf litter. In such circumstances patches of bare soil are dispersed throughout a system for at least part of the year with implications for a suite of processes and presumably for litter dwelling organisms. I have called these patches "Interspersed Denuded Zones": there may be a better name for them out there already.
I wonder if others have been working on characterizing the distribution and consequences of these sorts of changes in litter dynamics. If so I would be happy to hear about there circumstances in which these occur. I expect, for example, that in urban forests under the influence of elevated N these may be pretty prevalent, but there may be several factors driving such phenomena. For completeness a "popular" piece I wrote on this appeared a few months ago on 3quarksdaily.com in which I hypothesize that such IDZs can have implications for the local extinction of soil critters (http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/01/a-tiny-dying-such-as-this-is-there-an-ongoing-mini-mass-extinction-of-soil-invertebrates-in-the-midw.html). It's highly conjectural, but we are beginning to do some work on it. Any thoughts on this issue would be helpful. best Liam Liam Heneghan Professor of Environmental Science Co-Director, Institute for Nature and Culture DePaul University Monsignor Andrew J. McGowan Environmental Science and Chemistry Building (McGowan South) 1110 West Belden Avenue Chicago, IL 60614 Ph 773 325-2779 Fax: 773 325-7448 email: lhene...@depaul.edu Blog: http://10thingswrongwithenvironmentalthought.blogspot.com/
