Data for What Regulates Decomposition in Agroecosystems? Insights from Reading the Tea Leaves

McDaniel, M.D., Mohammadiarvejeh, P., Hu, G., Middleton, T.E. March 10, 2026. Data for: “What Regulates Decomposition in Agroecosystems? Insights from Reading the Tea Leaves.” Iowa State University FigShare. DOI: 10.25380/iastate.30104761.

Litter decomposition is a critical Earth process, recycling nutrients and setting a portion of plant tissue on a path toward soil organic matter. Despite this importance, we still lack a good understanding of local factors that regulate decomposition, especially in agroecosystems where management plays an outsized role. To help understand these factors, 1308 tea bags containing green and rooibos tea leaves were buried in 109 plots being exposed to a variety of management practices. This dataset contains the decomposition measurements (mass) of those tea bags that were collected 6 times during the 2018 growing season at 9 long-term experimental farms in Iowa, USA. Additionally, the dataset contains a variety of soil and crop measurements to support the understanding of the soils and the decomposition measurements. Files are presented in .csv format.

Iowa State University FigShare: Raw data for tea, soil, and crop variables; metadata; codebook; abbreviation descriptions.