Abstract
This article describes new approaches for manipulation of temperature and water input in the field. Nighttime warming was created by reflection of infrared radiation. Automatically operated reflective curtains covered the vegetation at night to reduce heat loss to the atmosphere. This approach mimicked the way climate change, caused by increased cloudiness and increased greenhouse gas emissions, alters the heat balance of ecosystems. Drought conditions were created by automatically covering the vegetation with transparent curtains during rain events over a 2–5-month period. The experimental approach has been evaluated at four European sites across a climate gradient. All sites were dominated (more than 50%) by shrubs of the ericaceous family. Within each site, replicated 4-m × 5-m plots were established for control, warming, and drought treatments and the effect on climate variables recorded. Results over a two-year period indicate that the warming treatment was successful in achieving an increase of the minimum temperatures by 0.4–1.2°C in the air and soil. The drought treatment resulted in a soil moisture reduction of 33%–82% at the peak of the drought. The data presented demonstrate that the approach minimizes unintended artifacts with respect to water balance, moisture conditions, and light, while causing a small but significant reduction in wind speed by the curtains. Temperature measurements demonstrated that the edge effects associated with the treatments were small. Our method provides a valuable tool for investigating the effects of climate change in remote locations with minimal artifacts.
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Acknowledgments
This project was funded by EU under the projects CLIMOOR (contract No. ENV4-CT97-0694) and VULCAN (contract No. EVK2-CT-2000-00094) and the participating research institutes. We want to thank Robbert Luxmore for sharing his ideas on passive nighttime warming as a research tool. The construction and manufacturing of the passive nighttime warming hardware was conducted by VEGA Montage, Aps, Denmark. We want to thank Jacob Pedersen (VEGA Montage Aps), Preben Jørgensen (Prenart Equipment Aps), and Ulrik Larsen (Erik Larsen & Søn, Aps) for their great and tireless support and advice in developing the technology and help in solving all the big and small problems during the course of the project. We also owe a lot of grateful thanks to all the technical staff at our institutes for their skillful help in running and maintaining the treatments.
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Beier, C., Emmett, B., Gundersen, P. et al. Novel Approaches to Study Climate Change Effects on Terrestrial Ecosystems in the Field: Drought and Passive Nighttime Warming. Ecosystems 7, 583–597 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-004-0178-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-004-0178-8