Collaborative Research and NEON: PalEON - A PaleoEcological Observatory Network to Assess Terrestrial Ecosystem Models

由于陆地生态系统过程的速度缓慢，包括树木的产生时间、生长速度和分解速度缓慢，气候变化和干扰对森林的影响要持续数百年。因此，陆地生态系统模型的百年尺度预估用于预测森林对环境变化的响应轨迹。建模者希望有关于森林在区域尺度和数百年来如何变化的数据，以帮助评估这些预测。相关的古生态数据已经收集了丰富的组合，但它们还没有被综合成一种可以纳入大规模建模工作的形式。所提供的资金将支持建立一个古生态观测站网络（PALEON）来应对这一挑战。PALEON是一个由古生态学家、环境统计学家和生态系统建模师组成的跨学科团队，其目标是对过去2000年从大西洋到大平原的森林变化进行严格而可靠的重建，然后利用这些重建来验证和改进陆地生态系统模型的预测。PALEON已将古生态数据的综合分析与统计和机制建模确定为提高预测未来环境变化的研究能力的关键挑战。因此，PALEON将跨学科培训和社区建设纳入PALEON使命的各个方面。除了重点工作组外，PALEON还与相关学科团体合作，制定数据收集、分析和实验协议的通用方法，以确保长期数据可以无缝集成到宏观生态系统分析中。对博士后和研究生的跨学科培训，包括夏季短期课程，将确保下一代研究人员在空间和时间尺度上自然思考，以理解气候变化和土地利用干扰的广泛影响。

Because of the slow pace of terrestrial ecosystem processes, including the slow generation time, growth rate, and decomposition rate of trees, the impact of changing climate and disturbance on forests plays out over hundreds of years. For this reason, centennial scale projections of terrestrial ecosystem models are used to anticipate the trajectory of forest response to environmental change. Modelers would like to have data on how forests have changed at regional scales and over hundreds of years to help assess such projections. A rich assemblage of relevant paleoecological data has been collected, but they have not been synthesized into a form that can be incorporated into broad-scale modeling efforts. Funding provided will support the establishment of a paleoecological observatory network (PALEON) to address this challenge. PALEON is an interdisciplinary team of paleoecologists, environmental statisticians, and ecosystem modelers with the goals of producing rigorous and robust reconstructions of forest change from the Atlantic to the Great Plains over the past 2,000 years, and then using these reconstructions to validate and improve the predictions of terrestrial ecosystem models. PALEON has identified the integrated analysis of paleoecological data with statistical and mechanistic modeling as a key challenge for improving research capacity for anticipating the future of environmental change. For this reason, PALEON incorporates interdisciplinary training and community building into all aspects of the PALEON mission. In addition to focused working groups, PALEON works with relevant disciplinary communities to develop common approaches to data collection, analysis, and experimental protocols to ensure that long-term data can be seamlessly integrated into macroscale ecosystem analyses. Interdisciplinary training of post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, including a summer short course, will ensure that the next generation of researchers thinks naturally at the spatial and temporal scales relevant to understanding the broad scale impact of changing climate and land-use disturbance.