Doctoral Dissertation Research: Fire, Vegetation and Environmental Interactions Across the Holocene on the U.S. Southeastern Coastal Plain

博士论文研究：美国东南沿海平原全新世火灾、植被和环境相互作用

• 批准号: 1536287
• 负责人: Sally Horn
• 金额: $ 1.54万
• 依托单位: University of Tennessee Knoxville
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1536287&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Fire; Vegetation

Human influences on the environment have transformed natural vegetation and altered natural fire regimes, leaving researchers and land managers with an incomplete understanding of natural fires and their response to changes in vegetation and environment. This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate long-term vegetation and fire interactions in response to Holocene environmental variability. This project will provide a better understanding of past interactions among fire activity, vegetation, and environment on the U.S. southeastern coastal plain. The research project will provide new insights regarding the modeling of ecosystem responses to future environmental change, and it will identify past environmental changes that may have affected prehistoric societies. The project will inform land managers who are conserving and restoring imperiled plant communities dominated by fire-dependent longleaf pine, an economically and environmentally important tree species. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.The restoration, conservation, and management of longleaf pine forest ecosystems has gained recent importance because of their commercial and environmental value. The conservation and management of these imperilled ecosystems requires an understanding of the long-term histories of vegetation and fire as well as their interrelationships with environmental change. The doctoral student will investigate historical natural fire activity and its response to past changes in the composition of vegetation. He will analyze pollen and stable carbon isotope ratios in sediments for evidence of temporal changes in vegetation composition, and he will analyse stable carbon isotopes to identify past drought intervals. The quantification of these biophysical properties will document changes in fire activity and fuel sources. These analyses of changes in vegetation, fire activity, and the environment during the Holocene will provide new insights into conditions analogous to those predicted under current environmental change scenarios.

人类对环境的影响改变了自然植被，改变了自然火灾状况，使研究人员和土地管理人员对自然火灾及其对植被和环境变化的反应缺乏全面的了解。 这个博士论文研究项目将调查长期植被和火的相互作用，以响应全新世环境变化。 该项目将提供对美国东南沿海平原火灾活动，植被和环境之间过去相互作用的更好理解。 该研究项目将提供有关生态系统对未来环境变化的响应建模的新见解，并将确定可能影响史前社会的过去环境变化。 该项目将为保护和恢复以依赖火的长叶松为主的濒危植物群落的土地管理人员提供信息，长叶松是一种经济和环境上重要的树种。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。恢复，保护和管理长叶松森林生态系统已获得最近的重要性，因为它们的商业和环境价值。保护和管理这些濒危生态系统需要了解植被和火灾的长期历史及其与环境变化的相互关系。 博士生将调查历史上的自然火灾活动及其对过去植被组成变化的反应。 他将分析沉积物中的花粉和稳定碳同位素比率，以寻找植被组成随时间变化的证据，并分析稳定碳同位素以确定过去的干旱间隔。 这些生物物理特性的量化将记录火灾活动和燃料来源的变化。 这些对全新世植被、火灾活动和环境变化的分析将为类似于当前环境变化情景下预测的条件提供新的见解。