OPUS: Lessons Learned From Model Tropical Ecosystems

该项目基于对哥斯达黎加大西洋低地热带系统近20年的实地研究，综合了生物多样性与生态系统功能之间关系的信息。在此期间，进行了实地研究，涉及相对简单的实验生态系统，包括热带雨林中最重要的植物生命形式的组合。通过对这些实验生态系统的分析，揭示了生物多样性在生态系统功能中的作用，并观察了这些现象的过程和机制。本研究的目的是获得进一步的、更综合的见解和理解单个植物物种和植物物种组合之间的关系，以及影响生态系统持续能力的因素。这将通过整合该项目的50份出版物和11篇论文报告的结果，以及对现有土壤、水和植被数据的新分析来完成。这项研究结果将通过针对相对广泛的读者的出版物广泛传播。这些出版物除其他外将包括一篇强调研究对土地利用和生态系统过程恢复的影响的论文，以及一篇综合专著，将植被和土壤中的养分储存与与生态系统过程（如生产力、淋滤和资源分配）有关的养分流动结合起来。首先通过综合研究生教育和研究培训计划（IGERT）培训的学生将有机会得到该项目的支持，从而获得从大量生态数据中进行综合研究的经验。研究结果旨在适用于对社会具有广泛重要性的生态问题，包括设计可持续的土地利用系统和生态系统恢复。通过理解所涉及的机制和过程，资源管理人员将提高归纳的能力，并且能够避免将每种情况视为唯一的。

Building on almost two decades of field research in tropical systems of the Atlantic lowlands of Costa Rica, this project synthesizes information on relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Over this time period, field studies that involved relatively simple experimental ecosystems comprising combinations of the most important plant life forms of the tropical rain forest were carried out. Through analysis of these experimental ecosystems, the role of biodiversity in ecosystem functioning was revealed, and the processes involved and mechanisms responsible for phenomena were observed. The objective of this research is to gain further, more synthetic, insights and understanding of the relationships among individual plant species and combinations of plant species, and factors that influence an ecosystem'scapacity to be sustained. This will be accomplished by integrating results reported in the project's 50 publications and 11 theses together with new analyses of existing data on soil, water, and vegetation.The research will result in wide dissemination of findings through publications that target relatively broad audiences. Those publications will include, among others, a paper emphasizing the implications of the research for land use and restoration of ecosystem processes, plus a synthetic monograph that couples nutrient storage in vegetation and soil with nutrient flows linked to ecosystem processes such as productivity, leaching, and resource partitioning. Students first trained through an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program will have an opportunity to be supported by this project and thereby gain experience in conducting synthesis research from large amounts of ecological data. The findings are intended to be applicable to ecological issues of broad importance to society, including the design of sustainable systems of land use and ecosystem restoration. By understanding the mechanisms and processes involved, resource managers will have improved ability to generalize and will be able to avoid having to treat each situation as unique.