EXTREME EVENTS & RAINFALL EXPERIMENTS

Parque Nacional da Bocaina – 06 to 09 April 2015

Bruno Rosado
Eduardo Arcoverde
Ilaíne Matos
Mayara Assis
 1
PAPERS
Smith, M.D. (2011) An ecological perspective on extreme climatic events: A
synthetic definition and framework to guide future research. Journal of Ecology, 99,
656–663
 2
PAPERS
Beier, C., Beierkuhnlein, C., Wohlgemuth, T., Penuelas, J., Emmett, B., Körner, C.,
de Boeck, H., Christensen, J.H., Leuzinger, S., Janssens, I. a & Hansen, K. (2012)
Precipitation manipulation experiments--challenges and recommendations for
the future. Ecology letters, 15, 899–911.
 3
PAPERS
Thompson, R.M., Beardall, J., Beringer, J., Grace, M. & Sardina, P. (2013) Means and
extremes: Building variability into community-level climate change experiments.
Ecology Letters, 16, 799–806.
 4
PAPERS
Dorman, M., Perevolotsky, A., Sarris, D. & Svoray, T. (2015) The effect of rainfall
and competition intensity on forest response to drought: lessons learned from a
dry extreme. Oecologia, 1025–1038.
WHAT IS AN EXTREME
DROUGHT EVENT?
IPCC DEFINITION:
extreme climatic event as one event being rarer than the 10th or 90th percentile
of climate events within its statistical frequency distribution at a particular place
over a certain period of time (IPCC, 2001).

AN EXTREME CLIMATIC EVENT NOT NECESSARILY IS

TRANSLATED IN AN EXTREME ECOLOGICAL RESPONSE,
SO...
… including both the driver and the response effect:

Extreme climatic event (ECE) as ‘an episode or occurrence in which a statistically

rare or unusual climatic period alters ecosystem structure and⁄or function well
outside the bounds of what is considered typical or normal variability’ (i.e. an
extreme response is evident) Smith 2011
 A threshold has to
be crossed

Because such profound alterations will be driven by changes in species abundances,

loss of key species, and⁄ or invasion by new species with different functional traits,
likely outcomes of ECEs may include periods of prolonged recovery, significant
hysteresis and⁄ or persistent state changes (no return to original conditions!) (e.g.
Allen & Breshears 1998; Haddad, Tilman & Knops 2002; Mueller et al. 2005;
Thibault&Brown 2008)
A mechanistic understanding
of how drought may affect
tropical forests can only be
achieved by rainfall
manipulation experiments
with controlled water supply

Moser et al 2014
RAINFALL EXPERIMENTS

Grazielle Teodoro 2014- Extreme drought effects on the phenology, growth and
ecophysiology performance of Campos Rupestres species
RAINFALL EXPERIMENTS

controle seca
RAINFALL EXPERIMENTS

West et al 2012 Diverse functional responses to drought in a Mediterranean-

type shrubland in South Africa
Abrigo de exclusão de chuva
UFRJ/UERJ
LACUNAS:

o 95 terminated and running

experiments ;
o Grasslands (46%);
o Few experiments on South
hemisfere (4%);
o Few experiments above 1500mm
annual precipitation (6%)
o Few long-term experiments

… only few experiments have

systematically tested how responses
of ecosystems to increased variability
and extremity in water availability
depend on functional traits at the
species and community level (but see
Knapp et al. 2002; Smith 2011; Franks
et al. 2007)
 Lack of standardization
… available data and knowledge of global change driven precipitation effects on
ecosystems are limited and less consistent relative to the effects of other climate
change drivers (i.e. elevated CO2 and warming). This may be due to the fact that
changes in precipitation regimes are temporally and spatially more complex and
uncertain compared with those in CO2 and temperature, making scenarios more
difficult to define …

The majority of studies have failed to incorporate

extreme events
o They have investigated the effects of changes in mean precipitation rather than
any change in underlying variability.
o The effects of extreme weather events on vegetation and ecosystem functioning
are likely much stronger than the effects of changes in mean values (Easterling
and others 2000; Meehl and others 2000).
o They not provide definitions of what constitutes extremity from either the
context of the long-term climatic record (i.e. is it a statistical extreme?) or its
effects on the system (i.e. are the effects unusual or profound in comparison to
normal variability?).
KINDS OF MANIPULATIVE EXPERIMENTS

FIXED MEAN EXPERIMENTS:

take the mean temperature
of current conditions and add
an increment to it to
generate a new mean
temperature, which is then
applied as the treatment
KINDS OF MANIPULATIVE EXPERIMENTS

FIXED MINIMA
EXPERIMENTS:
The effect is to increase
mean temperatures but to
reduce variability, although
not to the extent of fixed
mean experiments
KINDS OF MANIPULATIVE EXPERIMENTS

FIXED INCREMENT
EXPERIMENTS:
Increment studies apply a
temperature treatment
while retaining natural
variability in temperature.
Most often, these
treatments are applied as
a fixed increment over
natural conditions.
KINDS OF MANIPULATIVE EXPERIMENTS

EXTREME EVENT STUDIES:

KINDS OF MANIPULATIVE EXPERIMENTS

DOWNSCALED CLIMATE

BASED ON CLIMATIC
MODELS PREDICTIONS

This kind of experimental data allows the application of highly

realistic treatments in experiments that include not only changes
in mean conditions but also increased frequency, intensity and
duration of extreme events. However, they are challenging to
apply outside of highly controlled laboratory conditions
THE ALTERNATIVE IS....
BASED ON LONG-TERM PRECIPITATION DATA:
To be extreme, drought must be unusually prolonged or unusually ‘deep.’
Prolongation is to be measured as beyond the mean for a chosen time inter- val,
such as 10 yrs… Gutschick 2003

In a climate change perspective, it will often be tempting and politically most

appropriate to conduct experiments related to established scenario-based
projections e.g. by regional climate models derived from IPCC standards or the
experimental scenario may be based on historical/statistical considerations of
what is ‘extreme’ (e.g. Jentsch et al. 2007; Pfister 2009; Smith 2011).

THUS…

Rather than excluding an arbitrary percentage of rainfall (e.g., 45%, Pangle et al.
2012; 50%, Anderegg et al. 2012b; 33%, Hanson et al. 2001), rainfall
manipulations recreating a specific drought type (i.e., 100-year return interval
summer drought) could make experimental results directly relevant to regional
projections of future climate even before we fully understand the physiology of
drought-induced mortality Anderegg et al 2013
CONSECUTIVE DRY DAYS (CDD)
APUD TOMZHISKI ET AL 2012

• Weather Station AGNE –2.455 m (Planalto das Agulhas

Negras);
• FURNAS Centrais Elétricas S/A from 1984 to 2011;
• How was the calculation made?
CONSECUTIVE DRY DAYS (CDD)
APUD TOMZHISKI ET AL 2012

50 days
CONSECUTIVE DRY DAYS (CDD)
THIS APPROACH WILL NOT WORK IF THE RAINOUT SHELTER DON'T EXCLUDE
HIGH LEVELS OF RAIN!!!!

ALTERNATIVE
APPROACHS???
Potential artefacts related to
precipitation experiments and
their causes, consequences and
potential solutions:
PROBLEM : Plants obtain water supply from water
Alternative water supply sources from below or outside treatment
plots

SOLUTION:
POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF WATER:
1 Lateral movement of water  trench!
reinforced with a core ofsheet metal or timber for protection against water erosion.
OBS: Trenching to avoid lateral water or root movements between treatment plots
and/or the out- side may cut roots and cause plant death in the plots making this
impossible or inadvisable at certain sites or systems
2 Subsurface movement of water 
- The general location should be on gently sloping land out of the path of natural
drainage lines.
- It is desirable on most soil types to have a barrier to lateral movement of
subsurface water around the outside of the sheltered plot and also between
replicate areas within the plot. Polythene film, 250 urn gauge, installed vertically in
a trench of the appropriate depth will arrest water movement. Shallow concrete
walls serve the same purpose and have also been used as tracks for farm
machinery??????
3 Dew and fog  what could we do??
PROBLEM :
Altered microclimatic conditions
LIGHT  Rain out shelters and the experimental structures inevitably create shade and
change the spectral composition, even when transparent materials are used.
TEMPERATURE  permanent shelters may cause passive warming.
WIND  unintended changes in wind exposure may indirectly affect the hydrological
balance through impacts on evapotranspiration.

SOLUTION:
Monitoring microclimatic conditions
TO MEASURE: do we have enough sensors?
Soil water content;
Radiation;
Soil and air temperature;
Relative humidity;
Wind speed.
PROBLEM :
Naturally variation in precipitation rates
The seasonal performance of a given year will for example define whether a
manipulation is drastic or not such as applying a drought in a naturally dry year.

o Anormaly wet year drought plots will not simulate a drought extreme event!
o Anormaly dry year  more drastic drought event in drought plots!
o In both scenarios control plots will not represent the historical conditions!

SOLUTION:
Historical control plot
We therefore suggest generating historical mean climatic conditions as an
additional control to ambient conditions. This second control allows for conclusive
results in case of extraordinary weather conditions during the years of
experimental manipulation. The historical control is realized using rainout shelters,
in which precipitation is artificially added Jentsch et al 2007
PROBLEM: soil moisture took several months to decline fol-
lag time lowing the imposition of our drought treatment West
et al 2012

SOLUTION:
install plots at the end of the dry season (winter)

Tempo de retardo!

Plant available water (PAW)

difference between the soil
water content (SWC) and
minimum soil water content
(SWCMIN) registered by the
TDR sensors, according to the
equation: PAW=SWC-SWCMIN
PROBLEM :
Access and trampling
Access to the experimental plots for sampling should be considered and integrated in
the experimental setup to minimise trampling and disturbance.

SOLUTION:
Stepping-stones ??
Stepping-stones were placed in each plot to provide access to specific
instrumentation.
PROBLEM :
Destructive sampling
Sampling strategies must be carefully planned and destructive sampling potentially
minimised or avoided, especially if experimental plots are small and/or the
experiment is conducted over many years

SOLUTION:
Choosing best traits
Planning what traits will be measured
Focusing leaf traits
PROBLEM :
environment hazards

SOLUTION:
Lightning
??????

Strong winds
Fix the rainout shelters with staples on the rock?

Heavy and windy rains

One lateral side of the plot was closed with transparent plastic to minimize the
wetting effect of horizontal precipitation.
OBS.: what is the side that we should cover?
PROBLEM:
Edge effect

SOLUTION ????
Buffer zone
From 75cm to 1 metro ... But we have only 4 m²
PROBLEM:
ANOVA X Regresssion
Experimental designs typically follow an ‘ANOVA approach’ with many replicates to
account for spatial variability. In ANOVA design, each treatment is applied at a
given (one) level. However, as precipitation is a continuous driver, a ‘regression
approach’ providing a response surface with information of responses at several
levels of precipitation might be more relevant and worth considering. This might
provide information of responses at a broader range of precipitation changes,
which is relevant considering the uncertainty associated with most precipitation
scenarios. Furthermore, a response surface will have advantages with respect to
constructing models and will often be statistically more powerful (e.g. Cotting-
ham et al. 2005)

SOLUTION ????
10 levels of drought
Changes in the rainout shelters...
PROBLEM:
No response
No mortality responses, nor compositional changes
West et al 2012 => 6 consecutive dry months
Teodoro 2014 17 => 17 consecutive dry months

Is the community resistant?

Is the drought treatment really extreme?
Is the experimental time long enough?

SOLUTION ????
Growth analysis
How to measure growth rates on grasses?
SELECTING THE EXTREME DROUGHT SCENARIO

Purchase long-term precipitation data  who hold this data?

Determine CDD during the wet season (longest veranico)
Lag time  install before wet season (which month???)
Ecological threshold  have to be ultrapassed
If the CDD approach doens’t work???

INSTALLING THE RAINOUT SHELTERS

Historical control plot
Trench and fencing
SELECTING THE STUDY AREA Microclimatic measurements
License Buffer zone
Extensive area Lateral protection
C. Modesta dominance Stepping-stones
Gently slopping Staples on rock
Without recent fire record Protection against lightning
Protected from harsh winds Focus on non-destructive traits
Near the Rebouças shelter and
away from visitors

Todas as áreas do planalto foram queimadas em 1963!!!!! Izar