Ecotrons: powerful and versatile ecosystem analysers for ecology, agronomy and environmental science
Jacques Roy,Francois Rineau,Hans J. De Boeck,Ivan Nijs,Thomas Pütz,Samuel Abiven,Samuel Abiven,John A. Arnone,Craig V. M. Barton,Natalie Beenaerts,Nicolas Brüggemann,Matteo Dainese,Timo Domisch,Nico Eisenhauer,Sarah Garré,Alban Gebler,Andrea Ghirardo,Richard L. Jasoni,George A. Kowalchuk,Damien Landais,Stuart H Larsen,Vincent Leemans,Jean-François Le Galliard,Jean-François Le Galliard,Bernard Longdoz,Florent Massol,Teis Nørgaard Mikkelsen,Georg Niedrist,Clément Piel,Olivier Ravel,Joana Sauze,Anja Schmidt,Jörg-Peter Schnitzler,Leonardo H. Teixeira,Mark G. Tjoelker,Wolfgang W. Weisser,J. Barbro Winkler,Alexandru Milcu +37 more
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TLDR
How the methodology for environmental simulation and process measurements, especially in soil, can be improved and the need to establish stronger links with modelling in future projects is discussed.Abstract:
Ecosystems integrity and services are threatened by anthropogenic global changes. Mitigating and adapting to these changes requires knowledge of ecosystem functioning in the expected novel environments, informed in large part through experimentation and modelling.
This paper describes 13 advanced controlled environment facilities for experimental ecosystem studies, herein termed ecotrons, open to the international community. Ecotrons enable simulation of a wide range of natural environmental conditions in replicated and independent experimental units whilst simultaneously measuring various ecosystem processes.
This capacity to realistically control ecosystem environments is used to emulate a variety of climatic scenarios and soil conditions, in natural sunlight or through broad spectrum lighting. The use of large ecosystem samples, intact or reconstructed, minimises border effects and increases biological and physical complexity. Measurements of concentrations of greenhouse trace gases as well as their net exchange between the ecosystem and the atmosphere are performed in most ecotrons, often quasi continuously. The flow of matter is often tracked with the use of stable isotope tracers of carbon and other elements. Equipment is available for measurements of soil water status as well as root and canopy growth.
The experiments run so far emphasize the diversity of the hosted research. Half of them concern global changes, often with a manipulation of more than one driver. About a quarter deal with the impact of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning and one quarter with ecosystem or plant physiology.
We discuss how the methodology for environmental simulation and process measurements, especially in soil, can be improved and stress the need to establish stronger links with modelling in future projects. These developments will enable further improvements in mechanistic understanding and predictive capacity of ecotron research which will play, in complementarity with field experimentation and monitoring, a crucial role in exploring the ecosystem consequences of environmental changes.read more
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Protein expression plasticity contributes to heat and drought tolerance of date palm
Andrea Ghirardo,Tetyana Nosenko,Jürgen Kreuzwieser,J. Barbro Winkler,Jörg Kruse,Andreas Albert,Juliane Merl-Pham,Thomas Lux,Peter Ache,Ina Zimmer,Saleh A. Al-Farraj,Klaus F. X. Mayer,Rainer Hedrich,Heinz Rennenberg,Jörg-Peter Schnitzler +14 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the protein expression changes in leaves, volatile organic compound emissions, and photosynthesis in date palm in response to variable growth temperatures and soil water deprivation.
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SpaceHort: redesigning plants to support space exploration and on-earth sustainability
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Recent developments and potential of robotics in plant eco-phenotyping.
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Competitive trait hierarchies of native communities and invasive propagule pressure consistently predict invasion success during grassland establishment
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Nitrous oxide emissions from soils: how well do we understand the processes and their controls?
Klaus Butterbach-Bahl,Elizabeth M. Baggs,Michael Dannenmann,Ralf Kiese,Sophie Zechmeister-Boltenstern +4 more
TL;DR: Improved process understanding, building on the increased use of isotope tracing techniques and metagenomics, needs to go along with improvements in measurement techniques for N2O (and N2) emission in order to obtain robust field and laboratory datasets for different ecosystem types.