Integrated Ecosystem Experiments to Advance Earth System Predictability

Overview

This workshop will explore how novel manipulation experiments can address major limitations to Earth System predictability within terrestrial ecosystems. The approach will be question-focused to identify the most compelling ecosystems and global change questions at this critical juncture in Earth’s and human history. Questions will be prioritized by potential impact and their capacity to reduce uncertainty in our scientific understanding and Earth System Model predictions. Project design to maximize mechanistic understanding and broad inference from an experiment will also be explored. Key outcomes from the workshop will be the initiation of a community discussion, and an ORNL report and potential publication detailing priority questions, manipulation experiments, and project design.

Some overarching guiding questions to consider in advance of and during the meeting are:

• What key ecosystem responses to the press of multi-factor environmental change are most poorly understood?
• What key ecosystem responses to changing environmental pulses, extremes, and disturbance regimes are most poorly understood?
• How will climate and global change shift key biome boundaries (e.g. woody encroachment in grasslands, savannah/forest, or boreal forest/tundra) and how will shifting biome boundaries affect biogeochemical cycling and feedbacks to the atmosphere?
• What high-carbon ecosystems are most vulnerable to climate and global change?

General Agenda

Day 1: Ecosystem experiments & Earth system predictability

Day 2: Key knowledge gaps in press environmental change and ecosystem functional responses

Day 3: Key knowledge gaps in pulse environmental change, extreme events and ecosystem structural responses

Day 4: Integrated ecosystem experiments’ project design