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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. 

Abstract Most biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem processes on land take place in microclimates that are decoupled from the climate as measured by standardised weather stations in open, unshaded locations. As a result, microclimate monitoring is increasingly being integrated in many studies in ecology and evolution.Overviews of the protocols and measurement methods related to microclimate are needed, especially for those starting in the field and to achieve more generality and standardisation in microclimate studies.Here, we present 10 practical guidelines for ground‐based research of terrestrial microclimates, covering methods and best practices from initial conceptualisation of the study to data analyses.Our guidelines encompass the significance of microclimates; the specifics of what, where, when and how to measure them; the design of microclimate studies; and the optimal approaches for analysing and sharing data for future use and collaborations. The paper is structured as a chronological guide, leading the reader through each step necessary to conduct a comprehensive microclimate study. At the end, we also discuss further research avenues and development in this field.With these 10 guidelines for microclimate monitoring, we hope to stimulate and advance microclimate research in ecology and evolution, especially under the pressing need to account for buffering or amplifying abilities of contrasting microhabitats in the context of global climate change.