CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS (CLIMOOR) Novel Approaches to Study Climate Change Effects on Terrestrial Ecosystems in the Field: Drought and Passive Nighttime Warming

This article describes new approaches for manipu-lation of temperature and water input in the field. Nighttime warming was created by reflection of infrared radiation. Automatically operated reflec-tive curtains covered the vegetation at night to re-duce heat loss to the atmosphere. This approach mimicked the way climate change, caused by in-creased cloudiness and increased greenhouse gas emissions, alters the heat balance of ecosystems. Drought conditions were created by automatically covering the vegetation with transparent curtains during rain events over a 2–5-month period. The experimental approach has been evaluated at four European sites across a climate gradient. All site