Collaborative Research: Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Local Extinctions: A 300-Year Experiment

物种灭绝是一个知之甚少的过程，特别是在局部尺度上，因为很少有生态数据集跨越足够长的时间来揭示灭绝的模式。地球上可能没有一个地方，在过去几个世纪里，在十年的时间尺度上，连续地仔细观察和记录了当地物种组合的变化。因此，许多关于环境变化后物种灭绝的模式和速度的基本问题很难回答。例如，有多少物种在当地消失？干扰发生后立即采取预防措施，还是干扰后的预防措施被推迟，导致未来要支付的“灭绝债务”？这个项目收集的数据将开始填补一个缺陷，这个缺陷限制了科学家回答这些基本问题的能力。传统上用于研究数千年来植物群落变化的古生物学技术将用于研究过去几百年来植物群落的变化。种子，叶片碎片，花粉将在沉积物芯从扰动湿地在印第安纳州沙丘进行分析，以创建一个长期的生态数据集，约10年的时间间隔，从今天到约300年前。对这些长期数据的分析将通过提供衡量当前生态系统变化模式对未来意味着什么的迫切需要的信息，推进生态理论并帮助保护实践。该项目将为几名本科生、一名高中生、一名高中教师、一名技术人员和一名博士后研究人员提供培训和指导。 该项目还将支持为K-12计划开发教育和宣传材料。

Species extinction is a poorly understood process, particularly at local scales, because there are few ecological data sets that span long enough time periods to reveal patterns of extinction. There is perhaps no single place on Earth where changes in the local assemblage of species have been carefully observed and documented continuously at a decadal time scale over several centuries. As a consequence, many basic questions about patterns and rates of species extinction following environmental change are difficult to answer. For example, how many species have been lost from local areas? Do extinctions follow immediately after a disturbance, or are post-disturbance extinctions delayed, resulting in an 'extinction debt' to be paid in the future? Data collected by this project will begin to fill a deficit that has limited scientists' ability to answer these basic questions. Paleontological techniques that have traditionally been used to study changes in plant communities over many thousands of years will be used to examine changes in plant communities in the past few hundred years. Seeds, leaf fragments, and pollen will be analyzed in sediment cores from disturbed wetlands in the Indiana Dunes to create a long-term ecological data set with approximately ten-year intervals from the present day to about 300 years ago. Analysis of these long-term data will advance ecological theory and aid conservation practice by supplying information critically needed to gauge what current patterns of ecosystem change mean for the future. This project will provide training and mentorship for several undergraduate students, a high school student, a high school teacher, a technician, and a postdoctoral researcher. The project will also support the development of educational and outreach material for K-12 programs.