U.S.-Norway Cooperative Research to Integrate Mathematical and Simulation Models of Populations and Landscape Mosaics

该奖项支持科罗拉多州立大学的John Wiens教授和Beatrice Van Horne以及博士后Thomas Crist与挪威奥斯陆大学生物系的Nils Stenseth及其团队在生态研究方面的合作。他们正试图了解景观的马赛克结构与个体生态的关系，并将这些影响转化为人口和社区水平。科罗拉多州立大学的小组在模拟建模方面有优势，而奥斯陆大学的小组则强调分析数学模型。他们将整合这些方法来解决关于环境异质性如何影响生态系统以及这些影响如何随空间尺度变化的共同问题。尺度和空间异质性对生态系统的影响已经成为当代生态学的核心问题。这一合作将通过将两种方法联合应用于两个小组正在研究的不同系统中独立收集的经验数据来评估这些问题的两种方法方法。这一结果将对预测理论做出贡献，在保护生物多样性和受威胁的生态系统方面具有重要的应用。＊＊＊

9400073 Wiens This award supports Professors John Wiens and Beatrice Van Horne, together with postdoctoral associate Thomas Crist, all of Colorado State University, to collaborate in ecological research with Nils Stenseth and his group in the Department of Biology of the University of Oslo, Norway. They are attempting to understand the relationship of the mosaic structure of landscapes to the ecology of individuals, and to translate these effects to the population and community levels. The Colorado State group has strengths in simulation modeling while the Oslo group emphasizes analytical, mathematical models. They will integrate these approaches to address common questions about how environmental heterogeneity affects ecological systems and about how these effects vary with spatial scale. Questions about the effects of scale and of explicit spatial heterogeneity on ecological systems have become a centerpiece of contemporary ecology. This collaboration will evaluate two methodological approaches to these questions by applying them jointly to independently gathered empirical data from the different systems being studied by the two groups. The result should be a contribution to predictive theory that will have significant applications in preserving biodiversity and threatened ecosystems. ***