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Radiative cover at the VULCAN field site at Mols. The cover reflects IR radiation from the ecosystem back to the atmosphere and thereby warms the ecosystem. Similar systems are installed in UK, Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Hungary
VULCAN - is a common European research project conducted in DK, UK, NL, ES, IT and HU investigates the effects of climate change on the functioning of vulnerable European shrublands aims at providing a risk assessment and guidelines for European shrubland managers involves experimental manipulation of the climatic conditions at field scale employs a newly developed "night time warming" technique was started in January 2001 is financially support by EU and the participating insitutions will run through 2001-2004 follow up on the previous CLIMOOR project
Objectives:
- assess the vulnerability of European shrubland ecosystems and the rate and extent of changes as affected by climate change.assess shrubland ecosystem responses to realistic changes in climatic variables in the long term using a newly developed and tested experimental approach.
- investigate the interaction between climate change and other stress factors such as N pollution and management.
- undertake a risk assessment and construct vulnerability scenarios for shrublands in order to evaluate the impacts of future hazards on these communities.
Scientific approach: VULCAN involves field scale manipulations of temperature and water at 6 European shrubland ecosystems (DK, UK, NL, HU, ES and IT) along a climatic gradient. Temperature manipulations are conducted as night time warming by coverage of the ecosystem at night with a material reflecting the long wave radiation thereby heating the soils and plants. Drought manipulations are conducted by covering the vegetation during rain events by a transparent cover. The effects on processes driving ecosystem functioning in European shrublands (plants, soils, fauna and soil water) are quantified . Particularly VULCAN focuses on ecosystems at lower latitudes and warmer climates.
Participants: VULCAN involves a consortium of 11 research groups from DK, UK, NL, HU, IT, SP and ES
Role: Risø coordinated the VULCAN project and was was responsible for the development of the experimental setup. Risø was involved in research activities relating to ecosystem processes at the Danish field site at Mols.
Resources: VULCAN was mainly payed through an EU grant and was further supported by the participating institutes.
Duration: VULCAN was funded to run from 2001 through 2004. The field sites are kept in operation to keep the treatments going in order obtain a longer data series.
Web page: Vulcan has a webpage for further information at http://www.vulcanproject.com/ |