MRI: Acquisition of Instrumentation to Enhance Faculty-Student Research in Community Ecology and Biogeochemistry

MRI：购置仪器以加强群落生态学和生物地球化学方面的师生研究

• 批准号: 0923234
• 负责人: Martha Phillips
• 金额: $ 16.11万
• 依托单位: St. Catherine University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2013-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0923234&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: MRI; Acquisition; Instrumentation; Enhance; Faculty

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This award provides funds to St. Catherine University to acquire a suite of instrumentation for analysis of the nutrient content of soil, plant tissue, and water samples. This will make possible research emphasizing the relationship between nutrient cycling and both plant-soil and community interactions in ecosystems. Dr. Martha Phillips will use the equipment for research focused on invasive species and long-term plant community dynamics in wetland ecosystems. Observed spatial and temporal patterns in invasion by Phalaris arundinacea (an invasive grass in wetlands) suggest that nutrient availability plays a large role in invasion risk. The equipment will be used to assess links between nutrient status and community invasion, as well as nutrients as driving competitive interactions between invasive and native species. Understanding the linkages between nutrient availability and invasive species will allow for better control of invasive species, thereby preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystem functioning, and preventing economic damage. The work of Dr. Jill Welter focuses on the integration of food web structure and nutrient cycling in river networks, providing quantitative linkages between communities of organisms and C, N, and P cycling. The quantification of these nutrient pools will further our understanding of the influence of the availability and resource stoichiometry of potentially limiting nutrients and food web structure on nutrient transformation and release to downstream ecosystems. This work emphasizes biotic interactions that may influence rates of nitrogen fixation, differentially affecting N and P transport. This is especially important in understanding how changes in N and P supply, so often a result of human inputs, influence nutrient uptake and retention and are transmitted downstream. The instrumentation will strongly enhance the intellectual scope of faculty-student research in community and ecosystem science and will be integrated into research-based undergraduate curricula in biology and chemistry. At the baccalaureate level, St. Catherine University is a liberal arts institution for women where many students (~25%) identify as multicultural and 27% are first generation college students; thus the equipment will help us to prepare women and students of color to succeed in graduate school and scientific careers.

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该奖项为圣凯瑟琳大学提供资金，用于购买一套仪器，用于分析土壤，植物组织和水样的营养成分。 这将使强调生态系统中养分循环与植物-土壤和群落相互作用之间关系的研究成为可能。 玛莎菲利普斯博士将使用该设备进行研究，重点是入侵物种和湿地生态系统中的长期植物群落动态。 所观察到的空间和时间模式的入侵草（在湿地中的入侵草）表明，营养物质的可用性在入侵风险中起着很大的作用。该设备将用于评估营养状况和群落入侵之间的联系，以及营养素作为入侵物种和本地物种之间竞争性相互作用的驱动力。 了解养分供应与入侵物种之间的联系将有助于更好地控制入侵物种，从而保护生物多样性和自然生态系统的功能，并防止经济损失。 Jill Welter博士的工作重点是食物网结构和河流网络中营养循环的整合，提供生物群落与C，N和P循环之间的定量联系。 这些养分库的量化将进一步加深我们对潜在限制性养分和食物网结构的可用性和资源化学计量对养分转化和向下游生态系统释放的影响的理解。 这项工作强调生物的相互作用，可能会影响固氮率，差异影响N和P的运输。 这对于理解氮和磷供应的变化（通常是人类投入的结果）如何影响养分的吸收和保留并向下游传递尤为重要。 该仪器将大大提高社区和生态系统科学的师生研究的知识范围，并将被纳入生物学和化学的研究型本科课程。 凯瑟琳大学是一所女子文科院校，许多学生（约25%）认同多元文化，27%是第一代大学生;因此，设备将帮助我们准备妇女和有色人种学生在研究生院和科学事业中取得成功。