Abstract. Tropical forests are faced with a substantial loss of forest cover due to human activities. The various forms of land use influence habitat structure, microclimate, and co-occurring species, with possible effects on ecosystem processes. The forests of western Kenya are the most eastern parts of the Congolian rainforests. Due to the high human population density only few remnants of these rainforests remained. Even protected areas are influenced by human disturbances, with unknown effects on ecosystem processes. Therefore, we quantified the mass loss of leaf litter with and without access of soil invertebrates within forest fragments and sites affected by increasing levels of agricultural land-use intensity in the Kakamega area (western Kenya; 1500 m a.s.l.). Mass loss of litter as an estimate of decomposition rate increased with rainfall during the annual cycle. Furthermore, mass loss increased with the area of forest fragments and decreased with land-use intensification. We found that soil invertebrates had only small effects on mass loss (

中文翻译：

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土地利用集约化对肯尼亚西部垃圾分解的影响

摘要。由于人类活动，热带森林面临着森林覆盖的大量损失。各种形式的土地利用影响栖息地结构、小气候和共生物种，并可能对生态系统过程产生影响。肯尼亚西部的森林是刚果雨林的最东部地区。由于人口密度高，这些热带雨林只剩下很少的遗迹。甚至保护区也受到人类干扰的影响，对生态系统过程的影响未知。因此，我们量化了在 Kakamega 地区（肯尼亚西部；1500 m asl）受农业土地利用强度水平增加影响的森林碎片和地点内，无论是否接触土壤无脊椎动物，叶片凋落物的质量损失。凋落物的质量损失作为分解率的估计值随着年周期降雨量的增加而增加。此外，质量损失随着森林碎片面积的增加而增加，随着土地利用的集约化而减少。我们发现土壤无脊椎动物对质量损失的影响很小（