Senckenberg Distinguished Lecture Series
The vast majority of experimental work exploring the effects of drivers of global change on terrestrial ecosystems applies only one or two factors (actually about 98 % of the published literature). This means we are almost completely blind to the concurrent effects of many jointly acting factors, even though this is arguably the reality. Experimenting with such a large number of factors comes with many challenges. Prof. Matthias Rillig on his work using a design that emphasizes the number of factors: this alone can explain many effects, highlighting the fact that reducing the dimensionality of the global change problem could be one pathway towards greater ecosystem health.
