Altering Rainfall Timing and Quantity in a Mesic Grassland Ecosystem: Design and Performance of Rainfall Manipulation Shelters

Global climate change is predicted to alter growing season rainfall patterns, potentially reducing total amounts of growing season precipitation and redis-tributing rainfall into fewer but larger individual events. Such changes may affect numerous soil, plant, and ecosystem properties in grasslands and ultimately impact their productivity and biological diversity. Rainout shelters are useful tools for ex-perimental manipulations of rainfall patterns, and permanent fixed-location shelters were established in 1997 to conduct the Rainfall Manipulation Plot study in a mesic tallgrass prairie ecosystem in northeastern Kansas. Twelve 9 x 14–m fixed-loca-tion rainfall manipulation shelters were constructe