The workshop was designed as a pre-meeting for future collaboration of a multi-site organic matter decomposition experiment in the East Asia-Pacific region. The meeting and discussion among potential site collaborators worked towards a successful regional cross-site comparison study. The Taiwan Ecological Research Network (TERN) took the responsibility to organize, host and conduct this workshop and the follow-up on the decomposition field experiment and to publish the group results. Workshop funds were supported, in part, from the ILTER network.