Disturbances fundamentally alter ecosystem functions, yet predicting their impacts remains a key scientific challenge. While the study of disturbances is ubiquitous across many ecological disciplines, there is no agreed-upon, cross-disciplinary foundation for discussing or quantifying the complexity of disturbances, and no consistent terminology or methodologies exist. This inconsistency presents an increasingly urgent challenge due to accelerating global change and the threat of interacting disturbances that can destabilize ecosystem responses. By harvesting the expertise of an interdisciplinary cohort of contributors spanning 42 institutions across 15 countries, we identified an essential limitation in disturbance ecology: the word ‘disturbance’ is used interchangeably to refer to both the events that cause, and the consequences of, ecological change, despite fundamental distinctions between the two meanings. In response, we developed a generalizable framework of ecosystem disturbances, providing a well-defined lexicon for understanding disturbances across perspectives and scales. The framework results from ideas that resonate across multiple scientific disciplines and provides a baseline standard to compare disturbances across fields. This framework can be supplemented by discipline-specific variables to provide maximum benefit to both inter- and intra-disciplinary research. To support future syntheses and meta-analyses of disturbance research, we also encourage researchers to be explicit in how they define disturbance drivers and impacts, and we recommend minimum reporting standards that are applicable regardless of scale. Finally, we discuss the primary factors we considered when developing a baseline framework and propose four future directions to advance our interdisciplinary understanding of disturbances and their social-ecological impacts: integrating across ecological scales, understanding disturbance interactions, establishing baselines and trajectories, and developing process-based models and ecological forecasting initiatives. Our experience through this process motivates us to encourage the wider scientific community to continue to explore new approaches for leveraging Open Science principles in generating creative and multidisciplinary ideas.

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BackgroundSampling root exudates in situ is challenging because root systems are often damaged while exudates are prone to microbial decomposition and sorption in the soil environment. Hydroponic systems provide the capability to capture root exudates without root damage or soil sorption; however, they lack the utility to provide drought stress. We hypothesized that a high-pressure aeroponic system could induce gradual drought stress and recovery by manipulating misting cycles, and that collecting “rinseate” from washed root systems would contain detectable quantities of exudates without destructively sampling roots. The objectives were to: (1) evaluate the ability of the aeroponic system to impose drought conditions on plants by measuring their metabolic, physiological, and morphological responses; and (2) test the efficacy of the aeroponic system to collect root exudates of cotton under progressive drought and recovery conditions. Progressive drought stress was induced for two weeks in aeroponically grown cotton at the match-head square stage (34 days after planting) followed by a 1-week recovery phase at full irrigation. Results The progressive drought treatment limited plant development by decreasing canopy height, number of green leaves, leaf fluorescence measurements, tissue biomass, and plant water content, while increasing visual drought severity. Abscisic acid (ABA) was chosen as a root exudate indicator sensitive to drought that could be monitored in the collected root “rinseate”. After initiating the drought treatment, ABA increased in the rinseate from drought-treated plants and subsequently declined in the recovery phase. Some response variables improved by the end of recovery phase (i.e., ABA, fluorescence, drought severity index, and water content), yet others expressed more longstanding effects (i.e., canopy height and number of green leaves). ConclusionUsing the aeroponic system, detectable quantities of root exudates were captured at each sampling time throughout simulated drought, while cotton demonstrated rapid adjustment to drought and recovery. This method expands root exudate collection strategies by offering continuous sampling of target crops throughout a diverse array of simulated stressors.