MRI: Acquisition of an Enhanced Climate Change Simulator

明尼苏达大学获得了一个增强型气候变化模拟器的奖项，这是一种独特的仪器，可以在明尼苏达州中部草原的户外同时创建和测量未来的条件，没有室或外壳，其具体目标是模拟大气化学。（CO2浓度，大气氮沉降）和气候（温度和降雨量）的未来，并监测一套生态系统的反应。模拟器包括改变二氧化碳、温度和降雨量的设备;以及监测和控制这些环境变量的辅助设备，并监测生态系统对气候模拟的非生物和生物（植被和土壤生物）反应。该模拟器将有助于明尼苏达大学学生和博士后的综合研究培训，作为明尼苏达大学和其他机构的各种协作和合作研究人员的研究平台，为小学，中学和中学后的学生和教育工作者提供STEM教育和培训，并通过多种媒体提供公共宣传。该模拟器将有助于重要的社会相关的科学研究。全世界只有少数几个具有类似能力的气候变化模拟器，没有一个能控制未来气候的许多方面，也没有一个能连续记录生态系统反应的记录。值得注意的是，该模拟器将独特地使假设检验多个全球变化因素对草原生态系统的相互影响。这种互动效应仍然是认识上的最大差距之一，阻碍了对陆地生态系统在面对多种全球变化时是否具有复原力以及它们对全球变化的反应是否会减缓或加快气候变化的速度作出预测。

An award is made to the University of Minnesota to acquire an Enhanced Climate Change Simulator, a unique instrument that simultaneously creates and measures future conditions outdoors in central Minnesota grassland, without chambers or enclosures, with the specific objective of simulating the atmospheric chemistry (CO2 concentration, atmospheric N deposition) and climate (temperature and rainfall) of the future, and monitoring a set of ecosystem responses. The Simulator includes equipment that modifies CO2, temperature and rainfall; and ancillary equipment to monitor and control those environmental variables, and to monitor abiotic and biotic (vegetation and soil organisms) responses of the ecosystem to the climate simulation. The Simulator will contribute to comprehensive research training for University of Minnesota students and postdocs, serve as a research platform for a wide array of collaborative and cooperative researchers at University of Minnesota and at other institutions, provide STEM education and training to primary, secondary and post-secondary students and educators, and provide public outreach through multiple media. The Simulator will contribute to important societally relevant scientific research. Only a handful of climate change simulators with similar capabilities exist around the world, and none controls as many aspects of future climate, nor has as long a continuous record of ecosystem response. Notably, the simulator will uniquely enable hypothesis testing about interactive effects of multiple global change factors on grassland ecosystems. Such interactive effects remain one of the biggest gaps in understanding that hinder predictions of whether terrestrial ecosystems will be resilient in the face of multiple global changes and whether their responses to global change will slow or accelerate the pace of climate change.