FIELD FACILITIES IN GLOBAL WARMING AND TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEM RESEARCH

Enrichment of atmospheric greenhouse gases resulted from human activities such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation has increased global mean temperature by 0.6 ℃ in the 20th century and is predicted to increase it by 1.4-5.8 ℃ in this century. The unprecedented global warming will have profound long-term impacts on terrestrial plants and ecosystems. Responses of terrestrial plants and ecosystems to global warming may feed back to climate change via ecosystem and global carbon cycling. As one of the major methodology in global change research, ecosystem warming studies can facilitate model projections on potential changes in terrestrial biomes in terms of parameterization and validation. The difficulty in comparing and integrating the results from various ecosystems manipulated with different warming facilities exacerbated the uncertainties of model prediction. In this paper, field facilities in simulating climate warming and their potential applications in different terrestrial biomes were discussed. Critical scientific questions that could be addressed by ecosystem warming studies were proposed.