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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 3, 2026

JenaTron - An Experimental Approach to Study the Effects of Plant History and Soil History on Grassland Ecosystem Functioning

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Published on: March 21, 2025

Do global change experiments overestimate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems?

Sebastian Leuzinger¹, Yiqi Luo, Claus Beier

¹Forest Ecology, Department of Environmental Sciences, ETH Zurich, Universitätstrasse 16, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland. Sebastian.Leuzinger@env.ethz.ch

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

|March 30, 2011

Summary

Climate manipulation experiments show that biosphere responses to global change drivers like CO2, warming, and drought may be smaller than expected. Impacts on ecosystems are likely dampened at larger scales and longer timespans.

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Climate Science
Environmental Science

Background:

Climate manipulation experiments investigate biosphere responses to global change drivers.
These studies typically examine elevated atmospheric CO2, warming, or drought effects on ecosystem processes like carbon and water cycles.
Experiments face limitations in the number of variables, time, and space, raising questions about scaling up results.

Purpose of the Study:

To review and analyze the scaling of biosphere responses to global change drivers.
To investigate how experimental results can be extrapolated to predict net ecosystem responses.
To identify general trends in the magnitude of biosphere responses across different scales and timeframes.

Main Methods:

Literature review of climate manipulation experiments.
Analysis of scaling effects on ecosystem process responses.
Synthesis of findings regarding higher-order interactions, time, and spatial scales.

Main Results:

A general trend suggests that the magnitude of biosphere responses to global change drivers declines with higher-order interactions.
Response magnitudes tend to decrease over longer time periods.
Impacts are also dampened at larger spatial scales.

Conclusions:

Both positive and negative global change impacts on the biosphere may be less pronounced than previously assumed.
Scaling up experimental findings requires careful consideration of interactions, time, and spatial extent.
Further research is needed to refine predictions of net ecosystem responses to global change.