LTREB: Collaborative Research: Decadal Variation in Antarctic Marine Benthic Ecosystems

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法》(公法111-5)资助的。记录和了解海洋气候和生态的长期趋势，包括人类活动对生物圈的作用，取决于对自然年代际波动的充分了解。拟议的研究将记录麦克默多海峡底栖生态系统在过去40年中的变化，即自开始对该区域的人口和社区组织进行定量研究以来的变化。调查人员将检索、分析和存档硬质和软质底质中海底生物组合的历史数据，并继续开展始于20世纪60年代中期和70年代初的几个时间序列项目。调查人员将专注于海洋无脊椎动物群落的演替，这些群落从20世纪60年代末到，在放置在海底的各种人工基质上定居并存活下来。这些底物包含了几十年关于定居、生长、存活、寿命、过度生长和其他生物相互作用和过程的模式的信息。最初的研究人员将搬迁并永久标记(使用全球定位系统)历史采样点；从尽可能多的历史工作中恢复数据；提供元数据，以确保过去的数据被理解，并能够适当地重新采样；在SCAR-MarBIN的永久数据库中向普通科学界提供所有数据。拟议的工作将与罗斯海的一个国际宏观生态项目密切协调，该项目由合作者西蒙·思拉什(纬度梯度项目)代表。除了在同行评议的出版物上报告结果，并为至少两名研究生提供研究支持和机会外，调查人员还将让本科生和高中实习生参与该项目，并参与教师培训项目。调查人员将继续与K-12推广项目和专注于海洋科学的大学项目进行持续的合作，并与斯克里普斯海洋研究所的白桦水族馆开展新的、更广泛的公众推广活动。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The ability to document and understand long-term trends in ocean climate and ecology, including the role of human activities on the biosphere, depends on an adequate knowledge of natural interdecadal fluctuations. The proposed research will document changes in benthic ecosystems in McMurdo Sound over the last four decades, i.e., since the beginning of quantitative studies of population and community organization in this region. The investigators will retrieve, analyze, and archive historical data of benthic assemblages in both hard and soft substrata, and continue work on several time series projects begun in the mid-1960s and early 1970s. The investigators will focus on the succession of marine invertebrate communities that have settled and survived on a variety of artificial substrates placed on the sea floor from the late 1960s to 1989. The substrates harbor several decades of information on patterns of settlement, growth, survival, longevity, overgrowth and other biological interactions and processes. The original researchers will relocate and permanently mark (with GPS) historical sampling sites; recover data from as much of the historical work as possible; provide meta-data to insure that past data are understood and sites can be properly resampled; and make all data available to the general science community in a permanent database housed at SCAR-MarBIN. The proposed work will be closely coordinated with an international macroecology program in the Ross Sea, represented by collaborator Simon Thrush (Latitudinal Gradient Project). In addition to reporting results in peer-reviewed publications and providing research support and opportunities for at least two graduate students, the investigators also will involve undergraduate and high school interns in the project, and participate in teacher education programs. The investigators will continue ongoing collaborations with K-12 outreach and college programs that focus on ocean science, and develop a new, broader public outreach effort with the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.