Associated with the climate manipulation instruments are a series of equipments partly installed permanently at the site, partly carried regularly to the site. These devices (air and soil thermometers, rain collectors, permanent and portable soil water sensors, lysimeters, litter collectors, infra-red gas analyser, data-loggers, multichannel field spectrometer) are used to monitor treatment effects and collect samples for lab analyses.
Research activities and possibilities at the infrastructure cover several fields including plant phenology, primary productivity, ecophysiology, plant population biology, role of functional groups, plant biodiversity, biodiversity of some animal groups, litter decomposition, N-mineralisation, soil respiration, etc. The regular collection of basic environmental and biological data for 8 years at the site provide a large set of background information that enables scientists to interpret their results they obtain in a short-term campaign at the infrastructure.
