We are go!

Introduction to RainDrop

 

by Melanie Stone (Open University)

 and Jessica Bayes (British Ecological Society)

 

And we're off!  We are excited to confirm that the first of many rainshelters for the RainDrop Experiment is in the ground.

Shelter framework going up on site at Wytham

 It's taken years of planning to get us to this point, from back in 2008, when we identified a gap in the UK's long-term experiment (LTE) platform provision, through many meetings and conversations, site visits, head-scratching, cogitation, compromise and a change in location from Parsonage Down to Wytham Woods.  

Getting to this stage has been no mean feat, and has only been possible due to the fantastic partnerships that have been forged between the Ecological Continuity Trust, the Open University, Oxford University and the Patsy Wood Trust. Construction will require the assembly of in excess of 10,000 individual components, a process that is being overseen by PhD student Melanie Stone, Dr. Kadmiel Maseyk and Professor David Gowing (all from the Open University).

Construction underway on site

This is a really exciting project that will enable researchers to look at the effects of future climate change on semi-natural calcareous grassland.  By using a combination of rainshelters and solar-powered irrigation systems, the experiment will investigate how changes in the rainfall regime will affect the grassland community.

A prototype rainshelter and coupled rainwalter collection and redistribution system was trialled for over a year at the Open University's Walton Hall campus before being installed on site.

The prototype in place on the Open University's Walton Hall campus

The two core treatments that will be applied are:

• reduced rainfall (-50% of ambient levels)
• increased rainfall (+50% of ambient levels). 

 These two core treatments will sit alongside control plots that receive ambient levels of rainfall and have no equipment installed, and procedural control plots which have rainshelters installed but which allow the rain to fall through to the ground beneath, and are designed to monitor any non-target environmental effects of the installed equipment.

RainDrop is intended as a new national research platform; within each experimental block there are currently four free plots to allow for further expansion of the experiment.