SOFAR-Projects within Climate Change

In CLIMAITE we investigate the combined effects on the soil ecosystem of increased CO2, increased temperature, and altered precipitation. For this purpose, a field research facility has been established with 48 plots receiving treatment in a full factorial test design with 6 replicates. The work on below-ground fauna is closely integrated with research on soil microbiology, plant physiology, plant ecology, and aboveground herbivory, with the aim to provide a complete picture of how an ecosystem may respond to predicted climatic changes.

In the EU funded Integrated Project, NoMiracle, we will investigate the combined effects of climatic stress and pollution in order to improve the basis for sound risk assessment of environmental chemicals and to introduce more ecology in ecotoxicological research. In the environment, organisms will meet several stress factors at the same time. In this connection, it is hypothesised that the presence of pollutants in the environment may alter climatic tolerance limits and, hence, an organisms potential geographic distribution. The idea of studying the interactions between dominant environmental stress factors and environmental contaminants seems, therefore, to have obvious ecological significance. So far, relatively few laboratory studies have been published on this topic. However, the potential for synergistic effects may be present under field conditions, not only for earthworms and Collembola, but also for other soil animals in polluted areas. This is probably most important in extreme climatic zones (e.g. the subarctic), where the frequency and intensity of ecological crises are highest. The ecological implications of this could be that pollution in such regions plays a much more dramatic role for the local extinction or geographical boundaries of species than in more benign climates. Along this line, it should be noted that ecotoxicological risk assessments in many cases are based on laboratory studies, where the test organisms have optimal temperature and moisture conditions. The involvement of combination effects in ecotoxicological tests could, therefore, improve risk assessment of soil polluting compounds and play a role in the extrapolation from laboratory experiments to the field.