OPUS CRS Characterizing and deciphering the forces driving long-term ecological change

该项目旨在了解当地的场地条件、景观因素和物种功能特征如何相互作用，以影响物种和群落对气候变化、物种入侵、氮沉积、栖息地碎片化和高鹿密度的反应。这些力量包括环境变化、栖息地丧失和碎片化、外来物种入侵、氮沉积(酸雨)和鹿觅食。该项目将对所有这些进行调查，以了解它们如何单独和联合影响森林社区。它还将研究影响物种反应的植物特征，以及这些力量的影响如何在每个力量的强度、当地条件和周围景观条件不同的地点发生变化。研究小组还将比较威斯康星州的结果和欧洲森林的结果，以更好地了解这些模式的普遍性。分享成果并确定威胁特定物种和森林类型的特殊力量将使我们能够更好地保护物种和生态系统变化，并对其进行管理，以提供生态系统服务。此外，该项目将开发一个公民科学监测网络来提供关键数据，提高我们明智地管理森林和野生动物的能力。这项研究将综合威斯康星州18年来的研究，涉及5种社区类型、250个地点和近400个物种。50年前的基线数据将与重新调查相结合，以详细描述和分析生态变化。它将首先利用最近发展的多样性理论，量化物种、特征和系统发育关系的阿尔法、贝塔和伽马多样性的变化。然后，它将确定社区集会中中立(基于分散的)力量与基于利基的力量的相对强度。这将涉及到应用质量作用模型和基于层级联合物种分布的模型。通过这些建模方法，将深入了解其他种群如何拯救当地种群免于灭绝，以及生态位和环境过滤过程运作的空间尺度。这项研究的结果将推动生态学和保护生物学的发展，将跨越广泛地区和数十年的大型和多样化的数据集与现代分析方法联系起来。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project seeks to understand how local site conditions, landscape factors, and species functional traits interact to affect how species and communities respond to shifts in climate, species invasions, nitrogen deposition, habitat fragmentation, and high deer densities. These forces include environmental change, habitat loss and fragmentation, invasion by nonnative species, nitrogen-deposition (acid rain), and deer browsing. This project will investigate all of these to understand how they affect forest communities, alone and in combination. It will also examine the plant characteristics that affect how species respond and how the impacts of these forces vary over sites that differ in how intense each force is, local conditions, and surrounding landscape conditions. The research team will also compare results in Wisconsin to those occurring in European forests to better understand the generality of the patterns. Sharing results and identifying the particular forces that threaten particular species and forest types will allow us to better protect species and ecosystem changes and manage these to provide ecosystem services. Further, the project will develop a citizen-science monitoring network to provide key data, improving our ability to wisely manage forests and wildlife.This research will synthesize 18 years of research from Wisconsin extending over five community types, 250 sites, and almost 400 species. Baseline data from 50 years ago will be combined with resurveys to characterize and analyze ecological change in detail. It will first quantify shifts in alpha, beta, and gamma diversity for species, traits, and phylogenetic relationships, drawing on recently-developed diversity theory. It will then determine the relative strength of neutral (dispersal-based) vs. niche-based forces in community assembly. This will involve applying both a mass-action model and models based on hierarchical joint-species distributions. With these modeling approaches, insights into how other populations can rescue local populations from extinction as well as the spatial scales at which niche and environmental filtering processes operate will be elucidated. The results from this study will advance ecology and conservation biology by linking large and diverse datasets extending over broad areas and multiple decades to modern methods of analysis.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.