Teracosm updates: Renovations to the EPA’s Global Climate Change Research Facility

The ability to accurately control climatic conditions in outdoor chambers is an important tool in climate change research.  Here we present the details of renovations made to the EPA’s global climate change research facility. The Teracosm facility consists of twelve sunlit closed-system chambers that monitor and control temperature, dew-point, and CO₂ conditions. Updates to the facility include automated door openers, automated real-time irrigation, and an in-house designed, automated soil efflux system coupled with automated hourly whole ecosystem gas exchange measurements.  Enhanced microprocessor logic and control strategies were designed to increase response time to dynamic target conditions, and an RSview interface was developed to provide operator manipulation of control hardware.  The RSview interface provides graphical overviews of real-time temperature, CO₂ and dew-point conditions, the capacity to troubleshoot control hardware, and a means to alter control responses, alarm thresholds or chamber treatments without changing the program code.  This unique facility provides an exceptional tool for exploring responses to climate change and is currently equipped to determine the impacts of symmetric and asymmetric warming on western Oregon prairie ecosystems.  Details of the renovations are likely to be useful for the design of precision climate-controlled chambers needed for investigating future climate scenarios in upcoming climate change studies.