Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800, Lyngby, Denmark.
Ecol Lett. 2012 Aug;15(8):899-911. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01793.x. Epub 2012 May 4.
Climatic changes, including altered precipitation regimes, will affect key ecosystem processes, such as plant productivity and biodiversity for many terrestrial ecosystems. Past and ongoing precipitation experiments have been conducted to quantify these potential changes. An analysis of these experiments indicates that they have provided important information on how water regulates ecosystem processes. However, they do not adequately represent global biomes nor forecasted precipitation scenarios and their potential contribution to advance our understanding of ecosystem responses to precipitation changes is therefore limited, as is their potential value for the development and testing of ecosystem models. This highlights the need for new precipitation experiments in biomes and ambient climatic conditions hitherto poorly studied applying relevant complex scenarios including changes in precipitation frequency and amplitude, seasonality, extremity and interactions with other global change drivers. A systematic and holistic approach to investigate how soil and plant community characteristics change with altered precipitation regimes and the consequent effects on ecosystem processes and functioning within these experiments will greatly increase their value to the climate change and ecosystem research communities. Experiments should specifically test how changes in precipitation leading to exceedance of biological thresholds affect ecosystem resilience and acclimation.
气候变化，包括降水格局的改变，将影响许多陆地生态系统的关键生态系统过程，如植物生产力和生物多样性。过去和正在进行的降水实验已经进行，以量化这些潜在的变化。对这些实验的分析表明，它们提供了关于水如何调节生态系统过程的重要信息。然而，它们不能充分代表全球生物群系，也不能预测降水情景及其对推进我们对降水变化对生态系统响应的理解的潜在贡献是有限的，它们对生态系统模型的开发和测试的潜在价值也是有限的。这凸显了在迄今研究较少的生物群系和环境气候条件下进行新的降水实验的必要性，应用包括降水频率和幅度变化、季节性、极值以及与其他全球变化驱动因素相互作用在内的相关复杂情景。系统和整体的方法来研究改变降水格局如何导致土壤和植物群落特征的变化，以及对这些实验中生态系统过程和功能的后续影响，将极大地提高它们对气候变化和生态系统研究界的价值。实验应特别测试导致超过生物阈值的降水变化如何影响生态系统的恢复力和适应能力。
