The complex nature of global environmental change requires an integrated, whole-system
approach to examining ecosystem responses to multiple, simultaneous environmental
change factors. While studies of ecosystem response at the field scale provide critical
data for hypothesis and model testing, gaining a fundamental understanding of biophysical
and ecophysiological processes is limited due to the influence of multiple and interacting
factors. The world-class research and education mesocosm facility will provide
unique opportunities to:
1) Conduct detailed process and simulation studies to complement ongoing field experiments.
2) Improve the design of future field experiments and models.
3) Examine future management and climate change scenarios.
4) Educate students by integrating this facility into courses offered in at least three
colleges at the University.
5) Provide a highly visible and easily accessible forum for public engagement in science
education.
This facility will make it possible to pursue long-term multidisciplinary studies.
Two important research and education themes that this unique facility will help address
include:
1)Impacts of multiple climate change stressors (CO2, O3, temperature) on northern perennial
natural and managed ecosystems.
2) Effects of seasonal saturation and freeze-thaw cycles on natural and managed northern
ecosystems.
The mesocosms will be developed using 12 large (2 m
3) rhizotrons including large above
ground canopies with a climate and environmental control system to examine processes
ranging from those in a model ecosystem to those at a molecular scale, including above
ground and subsurface processes. The mesocosm facility will be used to bridge the gap
between theoretical, laboratory, field, and model-based investigations at a range of scales.
A sophisticated climate control system will allow a large, interdisciplinary, collaborative
research team (15 Senior Investigators) to examine the effects of temperature, water table,
carbon dioxide (CO
2) and ground level ozone (0
3) variations on biophysical and ecophysiological
processes.
In particular, the mesocosms will be uniquely designed to study cold temperature
processes, which remain poorly understood and understudied. The simulation of mid-continent
winter will be achieved using conditioned (filtered, modified) outside air and soil
freezing. In addition, fluctuating water tables, which strongly influence the chemistry,
physics, and biology of northern ecosystems, will be studied. New state-of-the-art
instrumentation will facilitate process investigations including microbial population
dynamics and root demography, soil chemistry, greenhouse gas exchange, soil water, heat and
chemical transport, physiological responses of whole plants, symbiotic associations,
ecosystem dynamics and land-atmosphere energy and mass exchange. Continuous flux
measurements of CO
2, O
3, N
2O, NH
3, and CH
4
at each mesocosm will allow for detailed environmental control studies.
This will help us to:
1) Educate and train the next generation of students, especially underrepresented minorities
(K-12, undergraduate, and graduate) in a whole-system approach to examining ecosystem
function and, more generally, the world around them through University courses and
partnerships with local schools and museum programs.
2) Establish a state-of-the-art facility as a forum for public engagement in education and
research through on-site and off-site programs open to the public.
3) Promote access to and awareness of interdisciplinary science to a global audience via an
interactive website, which will include live images of the belowground root growth, plant
growth, data for environmental variables, augmented with images of scientists actively
working at the facility.
