Facilities
EucFACE
Western Sydney University’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment is home to the world’s first Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment experiment in a mature, warm temperate forest ecosystem. EucFACE is a massive experiment that exposes large areas of native Cumberland Plain forest to elevated CO2 at around 550ppm which is what we expect to reach by 2050.
The flux tower and associated infrastructure
The instruments accomodates a monitoring system that quantifies the exchanges of water, carbon and energy between the ecosystem and the atmosphere. It continuously records micrometeorological conditions (such as radiation, wind speed, humidity, temperature or air pressure), along with the concentrations of water and carbon dioxide.
The Observatory is also equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation that provides detailed measurements of a variety of processes including tree growth, fuel moisture, or changes in the cycles and processes of plants and animals.
Whole tree chambers
The twelve Whole Tree Chambers provide fully enclosed, controlled environments for trees up to nine metres tall. In these chambers, researchers can manipulate the environment around a tree including air temperature, soil moisture, irrigation, CO2 levels and humidity to predict the integrated effects of altered climates on tree physiology.
Hawkesbury forest experiment
How will Australia's eucalypt forests respond to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate? A continuing rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration is inevitable, and its impact on Australia's forest and woodland ecosystems must be considered in our environmental management and water catchment strategies.
DriGrass
The DRIGrass facility was established in 2013 to investigate the impacts of changes in the
frequency and size of rainfall events on a mesic grassland, and the role of root herbivory as a
modifier of plant and ecosystem responses.
Rainfall treatments include an ambient control, a 50% reduction and a 50% increase in
ambient rainfall, a reduced frequency treatment which receives control rainfall amounts in a
single event, once every three weeks, and a summer-long rainfall exclusion. Grassland
functioning is strongly influenced by rainfall amount and, to a lesser extent, frequency, with
the biggest effects associated with summer drought. Ongoing research is evaluating the
effects of altered rainfall regimes on plant community diversity, plant-microbial interactions
and key ecosystem processes including nutrient and carbon cycling.