CAREER: Influences of plant traits on wood decomposition rates across scales: From fungal microbe communities to carbon turnover

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Forest systems contain approximately half of the carbon held on the planet. Much of this forest carbon is locked up in woody stems either in living plants or as dead wood fallen on the ground. The rate that carbon is released from wood back into the atmosphere has large implications for global climate change. Climate also influences both decomposition rates of wood and forest tree mortality. Variation in how wood is chemically and physically constructed by trees regulates each of these relationships. This project is part of a long-term career goal to determine the influence of plant anatomy, chemistry, and functional traits, e.g., density of wood, height of trees, on rates of wood decomposition. This project focuses on temperate forests of the Ozark Highlands, MO, USA, one of the largest forested ecosystems between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains. The project is developed around three interrelated themes. Variation in tree traits will be related to variation in decomposition rates, this variation will be linked to changes in the fungal community (the predominant cause of wood decomposition and thus carbon release from wood), and variation in decomposition rates will be scaled up to variation in carbon release across the landscape. The three themes will be linked together to explore possible management implications. The University of Missouri - St. Louis, which has a predominantly metropolitan student body, lacks any field courses in its undergraduate biology curriculum. As part of this project researchers will develop an undergraduate research course, focusing on the diversity of ecological interactions among plants, fungi, insects and other taxa, and human impacts on these taxa. This course will have field and laboratory components and will bring students into contact with local naturalists and the biodiversity of the region.