The activities within the centre will involve four levels of activities organized in 6 work packages. The four activity levels are: “experimental activities”, “research activities”, “synthesising research activities” and “additional activities”.

• The “experimental activities” consists of Work package 1 “Experimental facilities” which will build up a new experimental field site involving combined field scale manipulations with CO₂, temperature and changes in precipitation patterns and provide linkages and additional measures at existing field sites and controlled growth chamber environments whenever needed.
   
• The “research activities” consists of 3 work packages relating to three different scales in the ecosystem. Work package 2, “Species responses”, will study the physiological response of individual organisms to climatic stress factors. Work package 3, “Effects on community structure” will study the impact of climatic factors on the ecosystem structure. Work package 4, “Effects on ecosystem function” will study the impacts of climatic factors on the overall functioning of terrestrial ecosystems.
   
• The “integrating research activities” consists of Work package 5, “Synthesis and integration” which will integrate the specific results from the research activities in WP2-WP4 into a common and conceptual understanding of ecosystem responses to climatic perturbations with particular focus on “multiple stress factors” and “temporal variation patterns”.
   
• The “additional activities” consists of Work package 6, “Steering, education, networking, dissemination and output” – SEND OUT. This will ensure and co-ordinate activities related to management of the centre, dissemination of research activities and results, linkages and collaboration with other national and international research projects, programs and networks and co-ordination of the education of master and Ph.D. students with other projects and educational programs.