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

该项目旨在了解当地场地条件、景观因素和物种功能特征如何相互作用，影响物种和群落如何应对气候变化、物种入侵、氮沉积、栖息地破碎化和高鹿密度。这些力量包括环境变化、栖息地丧失和破碎化、外来物种入侵、氮沉积（酸雨）和鹿的觅食。该项目将调查所有这些因素，以了解它们是如何单独或共同影响森林群落的。它还将研究影响物种如何反应的植物特征，以及这些力的影响如何在每个力的强度、当地条件和周围景观条件不同的地点变化。研究小组还将把威斯康星州的结果与欧洲森林的结果进行比较，以更好地了解这些模式的普遍性。分享结果并确定威胁特定物种和森林类型的特定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，该项目将建立一个公民科学监测网络，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年来对5种群落类型、250个地点和近400个物种的研究。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α、β和γ多样性的变化。然后，它将确定中性（以分散为基础）与基于小生境的力量在社区集会中的相对强度。这将涉及应用质量作用模型和基于分层联合物种分布的模型。通过这些建模方法，可以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。这项研究的结果将通过将大型和多样化的数据集与现代分析方法联系起来，扩展到广泛的地区和几十年，从而推进生态学和保护生物学。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.