Workshop Proposal: Long-term trends in nitrogen cycles in ecosystems: Field monitoring and global comparisons

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This award supports the travel of five faculty and four students from the United States to participate in an international training course on long-term trends in nitrogen cycles in ecosystems at Hokkaido University in Japan, June 16-24, 2016. The course includes field monitoring at the nearby Uryu Experimental Forest, as well as comparisons of nitrogen cycling patterns in ecosystems from around the world. The training is designed to expose young researchers (PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and early career faculty) to state-of-the-art approaches for the analysis of nitrogen cycling in ecosystems, with a focus on key ecosystem processes and implications for environmental pollution. The course structure includes lectures, field classes, data collection and analyses, and group discussions. Participants will learn about standard research protocols, emerging methods, recent findings, and data analytical tools and will gain experience working with international colleagues. Because this workshop is primarily the result of a new collaboration between U.S. and Japanese scholars and supports ongoing research in ecosystem science and long-term ecological research, co-funding is provided by the NSF International Science and Engineering Global Venture Fund.Anthropogenically derived (reactive) nitrogen plays a central role in global environmental change, including climate change, biodiversity loss, air pollution, greenhouse gas emission, water pollution, as well as food production and human health. Current understanding of the biogeochemical processes that govern the nitrogen cycle in coupled human-ecological systems around the globe is drawn largely from long-term ecological monitoring and experimental studies. Given the global nature of the nitrogen cycle challenges, integrated international and long-term collaborative studies are essential to reduce uncertainties, promote further understanding, and design solutions to environmental problems associated with nitrogen cycle in ecosystems across the globe. This workshop emerges from new efforts focused on global patterns in nitrogen cycling within the International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network, led by Prof. Hideki Shibata at Hokkaido University, the organizer of this workshop.