LTREB: Continuing a Climate Manipulation Experiment to Test Hypothesis About Intermediate-term Effects on Carbon Sequestration and Plant Species Richness

这个LTREB项目将继续一项为期11年的气候操纵实验和一项为期6年的气候梯度研究，从而提供更长期的数据集，用于检验关于气候和生态系统之间联系的两个假说。第一种假设与气候变暖对碳封存的影响有关，第二种假设与气候控制对植物物种丰富度的影响有关。气候变化可以改变植物、凋落物和土壤中的碳储量，从而产生反馈，这可能会增强或减缓大气中二氧化碳的人为积累。这种反馈在山地和高纬度生态系统中可能尤其强烈，因为这些生态系统的土壤碳含量丰富，植被对气候变量(如生长季的长度)很敏感，而且由于雪的反照率反馈，气候变化预计会很大。整个生态系统的复杂性使得预测这种碳平衡反馈的幅度成为当今生态学的主要挑战。

0211025HarteThis LTREB project will continue an 11-year climate manipulation experiment and a 6-year climate-gradient study, thereby providing longer-term data sets to be used to test two hypotheses concerning the linkages between climate and ecosystems. The first hypothesis relates to the effect of climate warming on carbon sequestration, the second to climate controls on plant species richness. Climate change can alter carbon stocks in plants, litter, and soil, resulting in feedback which could either enhance or retard the anthropogenic buildup of atmospheric CO2. Such feedback could be especially strong in montane and high-latitude ecosystems where soils are carbon-rich, vegetation is sensitive to climatic variables such as length of growing season, and climate change is expected to be large due to snow-albedo feedback. The complexity of whole ecosystems renders prediction of the magnitude of this carbon-balance feedback a major challenge in ecology today.