OPUS: CRS: The impacts of changing phenology on species, ecological interactions, and conservation

环境变化正在改变季节性事件的时间，例如植物在春天开花或叶子，或者叶子颜色变化或鸟类在秋天迁徙。这些变化正在改变物种之间的关系，比如植物和传粉者之间，鸟类和它们所吃的昆虫之间，并且正在影响保护管理者用来保护物种的技术。该项目将综合17年来对植物和动物对环境变化的反应的研究，以及波士顿大学Primack实验室对植物种群和群落生态学的30年研究。综合将解决生态和保护中的关键问题，例如不同的物种，地点和季节性事件如何应对气候变化，以及这些变化如何影响保护管理人员用于保护自然资源的方法。综合工作将包括亨利大卫梭罗在19世纪50年代在马萨诸塞州康科德对植物开花、长叶和鸟类迁徙的观察，以及日本和韩国数十个地点、三大洲八个植物园和两个美国国家公园的开花和其他季节性事件的观察。研究人员将通过科学和公共演讲，媒体采访以及与保护管理人员的互动来广泛传播该项目的结果。研究人员还将让高中教师和公民科学家参与与这项研究有关的活动。该项目将产生四篇综合论文，将探讨和描述：（1）植物物候对环境变化的反应变化和生态关系的潜在破坏;（2）植物园在推进环境变化研究中的作用;（3）标准化，评估和分析物候资源以了解环境变化的生态反应的最佳实践;（4）植物园在环境变化研究中的作用。（4）将植物对环境变化的反应纳入保护和保护区管理的技术和假设。该项目还将在长期、可搜索的数据档案中公开提供与该项目有关的关键数据集和元数据。这些数据集涵盖了很长一段时间，几十个物种，以及众多的实地考察点，将使其他研究人员能够进行进一步的分析，探索物种对环境变化的反应，并将为旨在教授数据的倡议提供资源，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Environmental change is altering the timing of seasonal events, such as when plants flower or leaf in the spring or when leaf colors change or birds migrate in the fall. These changes are altering relationships between species—such as between plants and pollinators, and between birds and insects that they eat—and are influencing techniques conservation managers use to protect species. This project will synthesize insights from 17 years of research on plant and animal responses to environmental change, and an additional 30 years of research on plant population and community ecology by the Primack Lab at Boston University. The synthesis will address key questions in ecology and conservation, such as how different species, locations, and seasonal events are responding to changes in climate and how these changes might affect methods that conservation managers use to protect natural resources. The synthesis work will include observations of plant flowering and leafing and bird migrations made by Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s in Concord, Massachusetts and flowering and other seasonal events at dozens of sites in Japan and South Korea, across eight botanical gardens on three continents, and at two US national parks. The researchers will communicate the results of this project widely through scientific and public presentations, media interviews, and interactions with conservation managers. The researchers will also engage high school teachers and citizen scientists in activities related to this research. This project will result in four synthesis papers that will explore and describe: (1) variation in plant phenological responses to environmental change and potential disruptions in ecological relationships; (2) the role of botanical gardens in advancing environmental change research; (3) best practices for standardizing, evaluating, and analyzing phenological resources to understand ecological responses to environmental change; and (4) techniques and hypotheses for incorporating plant responses to environmental change into conservation and protected area management. The project will also make key data sets and metadata associated with this project publicly available in long-term, searchable data archives. These data sets—which cover long periods of time, dozens of species, and numerous field sites—will allow other researchers to carry out further analyses exploring species responses to environmental change and will provide a resource for initiatives aimed at teaching data-driven ecology and statistics to high school students and undergraduates.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.