Abstract:

Due to the sharp increase in carbon emissions from human activities, global surface air temperature has increased significantly by approximately 1 °C since the Industrial Revolution, and it will continue to increase by up to 4 °C by the end of 21st century. This unprecedented climate change will not only affect the adaptation strategies of terrestrial vegetation, but also profoundly affect the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems. The feedbacks of terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycling to warming is the key factor controlling the speed of future climate change. Therefore, a large number of ecosystem-scale field warming manipulation experiments have been conducted globally to study the carbon budget of terrestrial ecosystems and to improve the prediction accuracy of earth system models. However, due to differences in techniques and methods of these field warming experiments, results among different studies are difficult to compare and synthesize. This paper reviews the common techniques and methods of field warming manipulation experiments, including active warming and passive warming. It also summarizes advantages and disadvantages, applicable objects and related publications for these techniques and methods. Moreover, it briefly introduces future directions of field warming manipulation experiments—the next-generation field warming techniques, namely whole-soil-profile warming and whole-ecosystem warming, and calls for establishing a coordinated distributed network of field warming manipulation experiments using these techniques.

Key words: terrestrial ecosystems, simulated warming, warming techniques, carbon balance, deep soil