Moving From an Experiment-dominated to an Observation-dominated Era in Global Change Impact Research on Vegetation
Date
Authors
Leuzinger, Sebastian
Medlyn, Belinda E
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
In 1992, at the start of the senior author's career as a plant ecologist, climate change was perceived as something that would occur in future, and efforts were focussed on predicting what the impacts of those future changes on ecosystems would be, using the tools of manipulative experiments and models. This was still largely the case a decade later, at the start of the more junior author's career in the same field, although observations of impacts resulting from climate change that had already occurred had become more common. More than two decades on, we are deep into the trajectory of climate change, with atmospheric CO₂ having reached 50% above the pre-industrial average, and other drivers significantly beyond their 20th-century baselines. We therefore argue that we must rethink the way we conduct experiments. We will likely move from an experiment- to an observation-dominated era of climate change impact research. This transition could be more explicitly considered and may require adjustments in research policy and funding. We present a practical guide to plan experiments in this new era of researching global change impacts on plants.Description
Keywords
CO₂, FACE, N addition, global change, manipulation experiments, models, observations, warming, 4101 Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, 41 Environmental Sciences, 13 Climate Action, 06 Biological Sciences, 07 Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences, Plant Biology & Botany, 3108 Plant biology, 4101 Climate change impacts and adaptation, 4102 Ecological applications
Source
New Phytologist, ISSN: 0028-646X (Print); 1469-8137 (Online), Wiley, 249(3), 1095-1102. doi: 10.1111/nph.70741
Publisher's version
Rights statement
This is the Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in New Phytologist © 2025 The Author(s). New Phytologist © 2025 New Phytologist Foundation. The published version is available, Free Access, at doi: 10.1111/nph.70741