EAGER: Microbial Populations as Biosignatures for Evaluating Long Term Effects of Urbanization

这项独特的、高风险的多学科研究将在微生物生态学、环境基因组学、考古学和城市生态学之间架起一座桥梁。研究人员假设，对土壤微生物群落的研究将揭示对过去文明活动的新见解，特别是在经历了反复城市化的地点。将从土耳其(tel Ta‘yinat)和以色列(Tel Gezer)的一个考古遗址的土壤剖面中收集样本。DNA序列将从土壤中恢复，用于描述微生物群落，并将其与其他地质测量相关联。将利用这一实验制度产生的多条证据线，并根据先前对两个遗址的文化历史的挖掘和解释，制定一个模型。这项研究涉及与澳大利亚和加拿大的同事以及土耳其和以色列的样本地点进行国际合作。该项目还将包括本科生和高中生到蒙大拿州和怀俄明州考古遗址的亲身实践、以过程为导向的探究性学习实地考察。该项目将通过支持一名为拉美裔美国人服务的机构的一名教员的参与来扩大对科学的参与。土壤微生物提供了一个潜在的易于处理的系统来调查反复发生的城市化事件。这些群落或“微生物群”可以提供新的洞察，了解塑造和改变不同时间尺度的城市景观的过程。该团队假设，位于Tell(人类占领和遗弃造成的考古丘陵)的自然和人为过程已经从微生物群中产生了可测量的特征，并且这些微生物特征可以与城市化和土地利用动态所反映的人类影响相关。将对两个代表废弃时间梯度(4000年至40年)的中东TET进行研究，考虑到两个目标：i)结合新的生物签名/组学方法，使用特定化合物的同位素、生物地球化学、化学计量学和考古学方法对每个TELL进行表征，以描述人类占领和使用的遗产；ii)将能够定义微生物签名的复杂演变的基于过程的模型参数化，以帮助预测人类干扰影响。这个项目的新方法解决了这些问题：i)在非城市化土壤中没有发现的Tell土壤中有哪些次生代谢物库存？二)这份清单如何反映了Tell复杂的城市化历史？第三，哈丁的人类生态定律如何帮助构建城市故事的质量和能量平衡维度？哈丁定律指出，人类对生态圈的全部影响(这里，每一条都是如此)是人口和人均影响的产物。其结果将是确定人类承载能力的能力(根据每个TELL的占用情况)，其中包括每个TELL对提供生态商品和服务的土地区域的生态足迹和边界范围。这个跨学科团队包括生物学家、考古学家、微生物生态学家和一名土壤科学家，他们依赖于广泛学科的专业知识的整合，以在新的历史、生物和环境背景下框架城市化影响的问题。由此产生的产品将是一种基于微生物组的协议，用于了解城市化背景下人类历史上的影响。这将改变我们预测城市化当前和未来环境后果的能力。该团队将通过一个夏季研讨会，利用面向过程的指导性探究学习(POGIL)技术和大黄石地区的考古遗址，自然地影响广泛的研究社区以及K-12教育。

This unique, high-risk, multidisciplinary study will bridge microbial ecology, environmental genomics, archaeology and urban ecology. The investigators posit that studies of soil microbial communities will reveal new insights into the activities of past civilizations, particularly at sites that have undergone repeated urbanization. Samples will be collected from soil profiles at an archaeological site in Turkey (Tel Ta'yinat) and Israel (Tel Gezer). DNA sequences will be recovered from soils and used to profile the microbial communities, and correlate them with other geological measurements. A model will be formulated using the multiple lines of evidence generated from this experimental regime, and informed by previous excavations and interpretations of the cultural history of the two sites. The research involves international collaborative work with colleagues in Australia and Canada, and at sample sites in Turkey and Israel. The project will also involve hands-on, process-oriented, guided inquiry learning field trips for undergraduate and high school students to archaeological sites in Montana and Wyoming. The project will broaden participation in science by supporting the involvement of an a faculty member at a Hispanic American-serving institution.Soil microorganisms provide a potentially tractable system to investigate repeated urbanization events. These communities, or "microbiomes" could provide new insight into the processes that shape and modify urban landscapes across time scales. This team hypothesizes that natural and anthropogenic processes localized at tells (archaeological mounds created by human occupation and abandonment) have produced measurable signatures from microbiomes, and that these microbiosignatures can be correlated to human impacts as reflected in urbanization and land use dynamics. Two Middle Eastern tells representing a gradient of duration of abandonment (4000 to 40 years) will be studied with two objectives in mind: i) characterization of each tell using compound-specific isotopic, biogeochemical, stoichiometric, and archaeological approaches in combination with novel biosignature/-omics approaches providing a description of the legacy of human occupation and use and ii) parameterization of a process-based model capable of defining the complex evolution of microbiosignatures to help predict human disturbance effects. The novel approach of this project addresses these questions: i) What secondary metabolite inventory is resident in tell soils that is not found in non-urbanized soils? ii) How does this inventory reflect the complex urbanization history of tells? iii) How can Hardin's Law of Human Ecology help frame the mass and energy balance dimensions of urban tells? Hardin's law states that total human impact on the ecosphere (here, each tell) is the product of the population and per capita impacts. The outcome will be the ability to define human carrying capacity (in terms of the occupation of each tell) which include the ecological footprint and boundary extent of each tell to that area of land provisioning ecological goods and services. The cross disciplinary team includes biologists, archaeologists, microbial ecologists, and a soil scientist and relies upon the integration of expertise across a broad range of disciplines to frame the question of urbanization impact in a novel historical, biological, and environmental context. The resulting product will be a microbiome-based protocol for understanding historical human impact in urbanization settings. This will transform our capabilities of predicting current and future environmental consequences of urbanization. The team will naturally impact a broad range of research communities as well as K-12 education through a summer workshop utilizing process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) techniques and archaeological sites in the Greater Yellowstone Area.