LTREB: Long-Term Studies of Seedling and Small Sapling Community Dynamics in a Neotropical Forest

LTREB：新热带森林幼苗和小树苗群落动态的长期研究

• 批准号: 0823728
• 负责人: Stephen Hubbell
• 金额: $ 44.63万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-05-01 至 2014-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0823728&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: LTREB; Long; Term; Studies; Seedling

This grant supports a continuation of a long-term study of a tropical rain forest and how it is responding to climate change. The forest is in the Panama Canal on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), a biological reserve managed by the Smithsonian and one of the botanically and ecologically best known tropical forests in the world. The grant is to study germination and survival of seedlings, stages of tree life histories that are most sensitive to climate. Large changes in seasonal and annual rainfall patterns are predicted in the tropics due to increasing atmospheric CO2, which may cause major changes in the tree species composition and turnover rates of tropical forests. Seedlings are early warning systems because of their drought sensitivity. Results of this project should be practically beneficial in forecasting how tropical rain forests will respond to climate change. The study also adds to basic understanding of how tropical rain forests work and why they have so many tree species. The subject research plot, five football fields in size, has twice the tree species found in all of North America north of Mexico. This project will test the hypothesis that seedling fluctuations let more species coexist by giving rare species a competitive edge in years when common species fail to reproduce. Prior support has resulted in the training of many U.S. students in tropical botany and ecology (over 200 undergraduate and graduate trainees since 1980, including 7 Ph.D.'s and 4 Master's students). Students, colleagues, and PIs associated with this project have already published more than 100 papers and 3 books based on data from this project.

这笔赠款支持继续对热带雨林及其如何应对气候变化进行长期研究。 这片森林位于巴拿马运河上的巴罗科罗拉多岛（BCI），这是一个由史密森尼管理的生物保护区，也是世界上植物学和生态学最知名的热带森林之一。 这笔赠款将用于研究幼苗的发芽和存活，这是树木生命史中对气候最敏感的阶段。由于大气中二氧化碳的增加，热带地区的季节性和年度降雨模式预计会发生很大变化，这可能会导致热带森林的树种组成和周转率发生重大变化。 幼苗是早期预警系统，因为它们对干旱敏感。这个项目的结果应该在预测热带雨林将如何应对气候变化方面具有实际意义。这项研究还增加了对热带雨林如何运作以及为什么它们有这么多树种的基本了解。研究对象所在的地块有五个足球场那么大，其树种是墨西哥以北整个北美地区的两倍。 这个项目将检验这样一个假设，即幼苗的波动让更多的物种共存，在普通物种无法繁殖的年份，让稀有物种具有竞争优势。 先前的支持已经导致许多美国学生在热带植物学和生态学方面的培训（自1980年以来，有200多名本科生和研究生受训，包括7名博士生。4名硕士生）。 与该项目相关的学生，同事和PI已经根据该项目的数据发表了100多篇论文和3本书。