RCN: INCyTE: Investigating Nutrient Cycling in Terrestrial Ecosystems: Integrating Observations, Experiments, and Models

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Very few ecosystems are fertile enough to support high rates of plant productivity. This is not due to lack of carbon dioxide, whose concentration in the atmosphere has been on the increase. Rather, it is due to the growth-limiting effects caused by the lack of other available nutrients in soil, especially nitrogen and phosphorous. Nevertheless, computer ecosystem models used to estimate the response of plants to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide predict that this environmental change will result in more rapid and abundant plant growth globally. Such models fail to incorporate the effects of other limiting nutrients on plant growth. This project will bring together experimental scientists and computer modelers to explore the effects of nutrients on plant growth, determine whether nutrient supplies are adequate to promote the growth predicted by models, and decide how to best represent the effects of nutrients in global computer models. Research coordination via this network is important for establishing how the carbon cycle is likely to change in response to global environmental change, with important implications for soil fertility and agriculture. The project will train multiple early career scientists, foster a number of diverse international collaborations, and engage with broad audiences using multiple scientific and social media platforms.The proposed Research Coordination Network (INCyTE) will bring together two communities that historically have not interacted closely: biogeochemical experimentalists and earth system modelers. The overarching goals of INCyTE are to enhance our understanding of nutrient cycling feedbacks on the global carbon (C) cycle in general, and to integrate different investigators, data, and experimental and conceptual frameworks to improve representation of nutrient interactions and constraints on the global terrestrial C cycle in Earth System Models (ESMs). While nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and others) have the potential to mediate plant growth responses to elevated carbon dioxide (and interact with a host of other global changes), only a handful of current global simulation models even attempt to represent those interactions and feedbacks. This project will: 1) Identify gaps in understanding/representation of modeled C-nutrients feedbacks and processes; 2) Coordinate a number of small-scale, coummunity-based, high-throughput experiments to address particular hypotheses and identify candidate processes for further attention; 3) Use network syntheses and community-based experimental data to enhance model representation of nutrient cycling; and 4) Employ new ESM inter-comparisons. Scientifically, the proposed work has the potential to vastly increase the ability to predict if and how nutrients may constrain the global terrestrial C cycle and enhance understanding of how nutrient-C cycle feedbacks may influence environmental change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.