Collaborative Proposal: MRA: The influence of climatic dipoles on plant and animal populations at continental scales

气候的变化往往会导致世界上一个地方出现异常温暖和干燥的情况，而远在数千英里之外的地方又冷又湿。气温和降雨量的这些持久和可预测的波动被称为“气候偶极子”，通常出现在数年或数十年之间。这一现象的一个著名例子是厄尔尼诺现象，美国南部的潮湿条件与北部的干燥条件有关。大多数生态学研究都是在地方或区域范围内收集数据。因此，气候偶极子在大陆尺度上对生态和环境过程的影响在很大程度上是未知的。气候偶极子可以提供对动物迁徙、农业和林业生产力、昆虫暴发和疾病出现等重要现象的洞察。这项研究将使用数千名公民科学家对鸟类活动的长期观察，数十年的树木种子生产记录，以及通过国家生态观测网络(NEON)收集的动物种群数量。该项目将与现有的公民科学计划合作并指导，以更好地预测气候对动植物的影响。该团队将组织“生态气候学”研讨会，为对气候科学和生态学感兴趣的初出茅庐的科学家提供培训。这项研究提出了一种应用于时空模式发现的新方法框架，气候科学家使用该方法来分析变异性，以确定整个北美的气候生态偶极子。最重要的假设是，许多生态现象在大陆尺度上受到气候变化偶极子模式的影响。具体问题包括：1)大气环流和气候偶极子是否在大陆尺度上同步树木(称为桅杆)和鸟类入侵的种子生产？2)独特的气候变异性模式是否影响在分离的霓虹灯地点和跨越多个时间滞后的多种分类群(依赖种子的鸟类、小型哺乳动物和壁虱)的种群动态？以及3)历史和未来的环境变化如何影响这些气候-生态关系？通过分析Project FeederWatch 30年来的数据和最近汇编的数百个地点的树木生长数据集，这项研究将探索使用经验正交函数来了解气候变化在快速环境变化期间对动植物群落的影响。霓虹灯等生态观测站网络和公民科学数据库的信息越来越丰富。采用气候科学的这些分析方法将代表着生态研究的一个关键进步。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。

Changes in climate often result in the appearance of unusually warm and dry conditions in one part of the world with cold and wet conditions thousands of miles away. These lasting and predictable fluctuations in temperature and rainfall are known as "climatic dipoles" and often emerge across years or decades. A well-known example of this phenomenon is El Nino, where wet conditions across the southern United States are associated with dry conditions to the north. Most ecological studies collect data at local or regional scales. As a result, the continental-scale effects of climatic dipoles on ecological and environmental processes are largely unexplored. Climatic dipoles may provide insight on important phenomena such as animal migrations, agricultural and forest productivity, insect outbreaks, and the emergence of diseases. This study will use long-term observations of bird movements from thousands of citizen scientists, decades of seed production records in trees, and animal population numbers collected throughout the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The project will partner with and guide existing citizen science programs to better predict the effects of climate on animals and plants. The team will organize "ecoclimatology" workshops to provide training to early-career scientists interested in both climate science as well as ecology.The research poses a novel framework of methods applied for space-time pattern discovery, used by climate scientists to analyze variability, to identify climate-ecological dipoles across North America. The overarching hypothesis is that many ecological phenomena are entrained at continental scales by dipole modes of climate variability. Specific questions include: 1) do atmospheric circulations and climatic dipoles synchronize seed production in trees (known as masting) and avian irruptions at continental scales?; 2) do unique modes of climate variability affect the population dynamics for multiple taxa (seed-dependent birds, small mammals, and ticks) at disjunct NEON sites and across multiple time lags?; and 3) how might historic and future environmental change influence these climatic-ecological relationships? Analyzing three decades of data from Project FeederWatch and a recently compiled data set of tree masting at hundreds of sites, the research will explore the use of empirical orthogonal functions to understand climate variability impacting plant and animal communities during a time of rapid environmental change. Ecological observatory networks, such as NEON, and citizen science databases are increasingly rich in information. Employing these analytical approaches from climate science will represent a key advance for ecological research.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.