The year is ending and the data is in…and there is a lot of it!

Thanks to the great efforts of all those working on the tundra teabag experiment we have over 4,000 tea bag decomposition samples, spanning more than 350 sites around the tundra. And there’s still more to come.

Teabag sites capture differences in decomposition right across the tundra biome

With 2017 just around the corner the analysis has now begun, testing three questions:

1. Does environmental variation do a better job of explaining decomposition than the type of tea? Or does decomposition rate just depend on what is decomposing?
2. How does decomposition of tea change over time and between the seasons. Arctic winters are cold, dark and long; does that mean decomposition only happens in the summer?
3. What aspects of the environment most affect decomposition rate? Is it temperature, moisture, surrounding vegetation, or something else?

With such a great…