The European Ecotron of Montpellier: experimental platforms to study ecosystem response to climate change
Résumé
The sustainability of agricultural, forested and other managed or
natural ecosystems is critical for the future of mankind. However, the
services provided by these ecosystems are under threat due to climate
change, loss of biodiversity, and land use changes. In order to face the
challenges of preserving or improving ecosystems services and securing
food supply we need to understand and forecast how ecosystems will
respond to current and future changes. To help answer those questions
Ecotrons facilities are born. Such infrastructures provide sets of
confinement units for the manipulation of environmental conditions and
real-time measurement of ecological processes under controlled and
reproduceable conditions, bridging the gap between the complexity of in
natura studies and the simplicity of laboratory experiments.The European
Ecotron of Montpellier (www.ecotron.cnrs.fr) is an experimental research
infrastructure for the study of the impact of climate change on
ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. This infrastructure offers,
through calls open to the international community, three experimental
platforms at different scales. The Macrocosms platform is composed of
twelve 40 m3 units, each able to host 2-12 t lysimeters, with a 2-5
m² canopy area and a soil depth of up to 2 m. The Mesocosms one has
eighteen 2-4 m3 units, each able to host lysimeters of 0.4-1 m depth and
0.4-1 m² area. The Microcosms platform consists of growth chambers
(1 m height, 1 m² area) in which smaller units (with photosynthetic
plants, soils, insects, etc.) can be installed. Each experimental unit
of each platform allows to confine terrestrial ecosystems. This way,
environmental parameters such as temperature (-10 to +50 °C),
relative humidity (20-80 %), precipitation (sprinkler or drip) and
atmospheric CO2 concentration (200-1000 ppm) are strictly and
continuously controlled and recorded. But the uniqueness of the European
Ecotron of Montpellier lies on its ability to also continuously measure,
in each unit, net gas exchange (evapotranspiration, CO2 / CH4 / N2O net
fluxes) that occur in between the ecosystem studied and the atmosphere,
as well as CO2, H2O, N2O and O2 isotopologues. Those tools are powerful
and remarkable to access additional information about processus involved
in ecosystem functioning.The aim of this presentation is to describe the
Macrocosms and the Mesocosms platforms through examples of international
projects recently run in these platforms.
Auteurs, date et publication :
Auteurs Joana Sauze , Jacques Roy , Clément Piel , Damien Landais , Emmanuel S. Gritti , Olivier Ravel , Hélène Lemoine , Abdelaziz Faez , Sébastien Devidal , Alexandru Milcu
Date : 2020
Volume : 22
Pages : 8650