Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of climate extremes and associated disturbances, such as droughts, heatwaves, deep frosts, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. These extreme events can reshape ecosystem structure and functioning in diverse ways and over different timescales. From near-instantaneous physiological responses (e.g. stomatal conductance, photosynthesis) to post-disturbance legacy effects from intermediate (allocation responses, productivity) to long timescales (soil structure, species composition, ecosystem succession), disturbance legacies can affect ecosystem structure and function, combined with more frequent disturbances, and can have profound and potentially irreversible outcomes. Improved understanding of the mechanistic connections across timescales and between different processes is needed to realistically represent such "legacy effects'' in ecosystem models. This session invites submissions addressing disturbances and legacy effects from observational, reviewing, meta-analytic, or modeling perspectives to better understand the nature and mechanistic bases of legacy effects. We particularly encourage system-level studies that bridge different spatial and temporal scales.

• ESA: Ecological Society of America -