Shortgrass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research

短草草原长期生态研究

• 批准号: 0823405
• 负责人: Michael Antolin
• 金额: $ 164万
• 依托单位: Colorado State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-11-01 至 2012-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0823405&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Shortgrass; Steppe; Long; Term; Ecological

Twenty-five years of intensive study has revealed a Shortgrass Steppe (SGS) ecosystem for which, despite chronic water stress, periods of severe drought, and intensive grazing by large herbivores, the essential ecological structure and functioning remain intact. With global change, however, a range of conditions is anticipated to develop far outside those experienced during the last several thousand years. Forecasting how the SGS will respond depends on understanding of key ecosystem drivers, including climate, physiography, biotic structure, natural disturbance, and human land use. The resilient ecosystem, bounded within natural variation but interrupted by human influence, may be supplanted by an unfamiliar one, with humans playing a much more direct role. The goal of the proposed research is to test the limits of resilience, function and structure of the SGS, by both continuing past work and by experimentally manipulating factors in new experiments that are known from previous work to be important. Multiple temporal scales of change and a combination of long-term monitoring, short- and long-term experiments will enable forecasts of the impacts of global change on the SGS. Experiments will involve manipulating factors that will most likely change in the future, and selecting ecological attributes and interactions previously identified either as vulnerable to change or likely to influence multiple other interactions. The project is organized into research groups that focus on biotic interactions and ecosystem processes, with multiple interdisciplinary studies united by cross-LTER studies, data synthesis and modeling. Besides publishing hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles and scholarly books in outlets with global reach, including a recent SGS synthesis volume, SGS-LTER impacts Colorado State University, communities and land users within Colorado, and beyond. Activities include outreach to ranchers, non-governmental organizations and land managers (especially from the U.S. Department of Agriculture); a large educational program integrated across K-12; involvement by hundreds of undergraduates as field crew, independent study students, and REU students; and an active graduate program. Much SGS education work reaches out to groups underrepresented in STEM disciplines. The ability to provide outreach is vastly improved upon recent completion of new classroom building at the field site. SGS maintains a proactive Information Management system that works to improve access to long-term data sets and the project web page is being redesigned to facilitate data access.

25年的深入研究揭示了短草草原（SGS）生态系统，尽管长期缺水，严重干旱的时期，大型食草动物的密集放牧，基本的生态结构和功能保持完好。然而，随着全球变化，一系列条件预计将远远超出过去几千年所经历的条件。预测SGS将如何应对取决于对关键生态系统驱动因素的理解，包括气候，自然地理，生物结构，自然干扰和人类土地利用。有弹性的生态系统，在自然变化的范围内，但被人类的影响所打断，可能会被一个陌生的生态系统所取代，人类扮演着更直接的角色。拟议的研究的目标是测试SGS的弹性，功能和结构的限制，通过继续过去的工作，并通过实验操纵从以前的工作中已知的新实验中的因素是重要的。变化的多个时间尺度以及长期监测、短期和长期实验相结合，将有助于预测全球变化对SGS的影响。实验将涉及操纵的因素，将最有可能在未来发生变化，并选择生态属性和相互作用先前确定为易受影响的变化或可能影响多个其他相互作用。该项目被组织成研究小组，专注于生物相互作用和生态系统过程，多个跨学科研究由交叉LTER研究，数据合成和建模联合起来。除了在全球范围内出版数百篇同行评议的期刊文章和学术书籍，包括最近的SGS综合卷，SGS-LTER还影响了科罗拉多州立大学，科罗拉多内外的社区和土地使用者。活动包括外展牧场主，非政府组织和土地管理人员（特别是来自美国农业部）;一个大型的教育计划整合在K-12;数百名本科生作为现场工作人员，独立学习的学生和REU学生的参与;和一个活跃的研究生课程。SGS的许多教育工作都涉及STEM学科中代表性不足的群体。最近在现场完成了新教学楼后，提供外展服务的能力得到了极大的提高。SGS维护一个主动的信息管理系统，该系统致力于改善对长期数据集的访问，并且正在重新设计项目网页，以方便数据访问。