The Ecosystem Sensitivity to Rainfall Experiment (EcoSeRE): Design and Synthesis

Objectives We are requesting funds to assemble a working group of scientists (primarily LTER and ILTER) with interest and experience in designing and conducting climate change experiments. Our goal is to continue to design a network-level experiment, proposed previously as part of the LTER Decadal Planning process, to manipulate rainfall (i.e., impose drought) in terrestrial ecosystems. Essential to the successful design of this experimental network is a targeted synthesis of relevant climate data from a broad range of terrestrial ecosystems, including the LTER/ILTER sites that have expressed interest in participating in this network. Specifically, the purpose of this data synthesis activity is to 1) provide context for the experiment and inform its design (i.e., determine the type and magnitude of drought manipulations), and 2) refine the guiding questions and hypotheses for the network based on this data synthesis.