RIG: Assessment of Secondary Succession in North Carolina: Advancing understanding of successional vegetation through coupled field and remote sensing studies

次级演替生态系统广泛分布于美国东南部，作为一个整体，构成了大气二氧化碳的大量汇。尽管演替生态系统在碳循环和其他生态过程中发挥着重要作用，但这些生态系统的时空动态仍存在相当大的不确定性。考虑到这一点，该项目的主要目标是通过开发和分析遥感和地面数据的耦合，了解美国东南部演替生态系统的现状和控制。该项目将使用新的和现有的数据集来评估北卡罗来纳州五个不同景观内部和之间的演代特征和生态过程。该研究将为今后在该地区及其他次生生态系统演替为重要景观尺度过程的地区开展碳循环、水文过程和气候-植被反馈研究奠定基础。这项工作还寻求通过与美国生态学会的生态教育、发展和可持续性战略（SEEDS）项目合作，从少数民族服务机构和其他机构招募本科生，参与与次级生态系统演替有关的培训、实地考察和数值分析，从而扩大代表性不足的学生对生态科学的参与。

Secondary successional ecosystems are widespread across the southeastern US and, as a whole, comprise a substantial sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide. Despite the important role of successional ecosystems in carbon cycling and other ecological processes, considerable uncertainty remains concerning the spatial and temporal dynamics of these ecosystems. With this in mind, the principle goal of this project is to understand the status of and controls on successional ecosystems in the southeastern US through development and analysis of coupled remotely sensed and ground based data. The project will use new and existing datasets to evaluate successional characteristics and ecological processes within and among five separate landscapes in North Carolina. This work will lay the framework for future research on carbon cycling, hydrological process, and climate-vegetation feedbacks within this region and other regions where secondary ecosystem succession is an important landscape-scale process. This work also seeks to broaden participation of underrepresented students in ecological sciences by collaborating with the Ecological Society of America's Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability (SEEDS) program to recruit undergraduate students from minority-serving and other institutions to participate in training, fieldwork, and numerical analysis related to secondary ecosystem succession.