Summary 1.Recent findings indicate that the interactions among CO 2 , temperature and water can be substantial, and that the combined effects on the biological systems of several factors may not be predicted from experiments with one or a few factors. Therefore realistic multifactorial experiments involving a larger set of main factors are needed. 2. We describe a new Danish climate change-related field scale experiment, CLIMAITE, in a heath/ grassland ecosystem. CLIMAITE is a full factorial combination of elevated CO 2 , elevated temperature and prolonged summer drought. The manipulations are intended to mimic anticipated major environmental changes at the site by year 2075 as closely as possible. The impacts on ecosystem processes and functioning (at ecophysiological levels, through responses by individuals and communities to ecosystem-level responses) are investigated simultaneously. 3. The increase of [CO 2 ] closely corresponds with the scenarios for year 2075, while the warming treatment is at the lower end of the predictions and seems to be the most difficult treatment to increase without unwanted side effects on the other variables. The drought treatment follows predictions of increased frequency of drought periods in summer. The combination of the treatments does not create new unwanted side effects on the treatments relative to the treatments alone.

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Highlights  The General Lake Model (GLM) is stress tested against 32 globally distributed lakes.  There was low correlation between input data uncertainty and model performance.  Model performance related to lake-morphometry, light extinction and flow regime; deep, clear lakes with high residence times had the lowest model error.

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The impact of elevated CO2, periodic drought and warming on photosynthesis and leaf characteristics of the evergreen dwarf shrub Calluna vulgaris in a temperate heath ecosystem was investigated. Photosynthesis was reduced by drought in midsummer and increased by elevated CO2 throughout the growing season, whereas warming only stimulated photosynthesis early in the year. At the beginning and end of the growing season, a T ¥ CO2 interaction synergistically stimulated plant carbon uptake in the combination of warming and elevated CO2. At peak drought, the D ¥ CO2 interaction antagonistically down-regulated photosynthesis, suggesting a limited ability of elevated CO2 to counteract the negative effect of drought. The response of photosynthesis in the full factorial combination (TDCO2) could be explained by the main effect of experimental treatments (T, D, CO2) and the two-factor interactions (D ¥ CO2, T ¥ CO2). The interactive responses in the experimental treatments including elevated CO2 seemed to be linked to the realized range of treatment variability, for example with negative effects following experimental drought or positive effects following the relatively higher impact of night-time warming during cold periods early and late in the year. Longer-term experiments are needed to evaluate whether photosynthetic down-regulation will dampen the stimulation of photosynthesis under prolonged exposure to elevated CO2.

Multiple plausible future scenarios are being used increasingly in preference to a single deterministic or probabilistic prediction of the future in the long-term planning of water resources systems. These scenarios enable the determination of the robustness of a system-the consideration of performance across a range of plausible futures-and allow an assessment of which possible future system configurations result in a greater level of robustness. There are many approaches to selecting scenarios, and previous studies have observed that the choice of scenarios might affect the estimated robustness of the system. However, these observations have been anecdotal and qualitative. This paper develops a systematic, quantitative methodology for exploring the influence of scenario selection on the robustness and the ranking of decision alternatives. The methodology is illustrated on the Lake Problem. The quantitative results obtained confirm the qualitative observations of previous works, showing that the selection of scenarios is important, as it has a large influence on the robustness value calculated for each decision alternative. However, we show that it has a relatively small influence on how those decision alternatives are ranked. This implies that despite the difference in robustness values, similar decision outcomes will be reached in this case study, regardless of the basis on which the scenarios are obtained. It is also revealed that the impact of the scenarios on the robustness values is due to complex interactions with the system model and robustness metrics.

The net ecosystem exchange of CO₂ (NEE) between the atmosphere and a beech forest (Sorø, Denmark) showed significant interannual variation (IAV) over 13 years (1997–2009) of observations. The forest sequestered, on average, 157 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹, ranging from a source of 32 to a sink of 344 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ in 1998 and 2008, respectively. The objectives of this study were to evaluate to what extent and at which temporal scale, climatic variability (through direct response) and changes in ecosystem functional properties (through biotic response) regulated the IAV in the ecosystem carbon balance. To address this question, we performed correlation analysis between the carbon fluxes and climate variables at different time scales. The response of CO₂ exchange to climatic variability was significantly higher at short time scales and the limiting factors changed intra-annually. Combinations of climate anomalies in different periods of the year either intensified or attenuated the aggregated ecosystem responses, implying that the changing distribution of climate anomalies, in addition to the average climate change, could have stronger impacts on the ecosystem carbon balance in the future. A semi empirical model was used to estimate a set of parameter time series for each of the 13 years, which was considered to represent the functional properties of the ecosystem. The climate and parameter time series were applied factorially by year to quantify their relative importance for the IAV in carbon flux. At an annual time scale, as much as 77 % of the IAV in NEE could be attributed to the variation in both photosynthesis and respiration related model parameters, indicating a strong influence of functional change. The possible causes for the observed functional change could not be addressed with the available dataset. This demonstrates the need for more targeted experiments, such as long-term measurements of leaf nitrogen content. Our approach incorporated seasonal variation in the ecosystem status and demonstrated a significant role of biotic factors on the carbon dynamics in a typical temperate deciduous forest. The method can be applied at other sites to explore ecosystem behaviour across different plant functional types and climate gradients. Further, this approach showed how important it is to incorporate functional change in process based models, which could guide model development and consequently reduce the uncertainties in long-term projection of global ecosystem carbon balance

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