(RCN) Terrestrial Ecosystem Response to Atmospheric and Climatic Change

Future changes in the global carbon balance and associated feedbacks to climate will depend on ecosystem responses to multiple, interacting drivers of global change, such as elevated CO2, temperature, N deposition and changes in the amount and timing of precipitation. Efforts to predict these interactions with modeling approaches have been limited by a lack of relevant experimental data, as well as the absence of mechanisms for rapid communication between modelers and experimentalists. This grant will establish a network of global change scientists in an initiative on Terrestrial Ecosystem Responses to Atmospheric and Climatic Change (TERACC), with the aim to (1) integrate and synthesize existing whole-ecosystem research on ecosystem responses to individual global change drivers, (2) foster new research on whole-ecosystem responses to the combined effects of elevated atmospheric CO2, warming, and other aspects of global change, and (3) promote better communication and integration between experimentalists and modelers. TERACC activities will focus primarily on a series of directed, interactive workshops, but will also include database management and educational activities