Collaborative Research: Moving Beyond the Margins: Modeling Water Availability and Habitable Terrestrial Ecosystems in the Polar Desert of the McMurdo Dry Valleys

第一部分：非技术描述：水是生命之源，而在沙漠中，水的重要性尤为显著。在地球上的干旱地区，以麦克默多干谷（McMurdo Dry Valleys）为代表的南极沙漠，是极端环境下生命的例证，那里缺水、低温、极地冬季长时间黑暗。除非人工或使用野外仪器进行测量，否则缺乏确定水的可用性的方法和预测哪些物种在旱地能够成功生长所需的数据。该项目旨在开发一种测定土壤湿度的新方法，并利用新数据确定适合生命生存的地点。将这些栖息地与麦克默多干谷中已知的物种分布相结合，这个项目的结果将预测哪些物种应该存在，以及在变化的环境中预期的物种分布。通过这种方式，该项目结合了多种方法，从最近的遥感产品、生态模型和30年的野外收集中，预测麦克默多干谷的生命在未来更温暖、更湿润的气候下可能发生的变化。这个项目有利于美国国家科学基金会的目标，即扩大南极生物群的基础知识和在极端环境中维持生命的过程。在这个项目中获得的知识将通过在西南美洲土著社区的高中课程规划培训，传播到其他旱地。第二部分：技术说明：南极洲陆地环境的特点是液态水供应少、温度低于零度和冬季的极夜。在夏季，积雪融化，冰川融化和湖泊附近的季节性蒸汽提供了各种维持生命的环境，但尚未在景观尺度上研究栖息地适宜性和驱动它们的过程。本项目拟结合遥感、水文模型和生态模型，基于水资源有效性建立麦克默多干谷物种的生境适宜性。该方法是在景观水平上，以建立物种分布的现在和未来的情景。主要有四个目标：遥感开发土壤水分水平；结合生物和土壤数据；通过结合物种分布和环境变异建立和校准生境适宜性模型；应用统计物种分布模型。开发生境适宜性和模型校准的实地数据将利用麦克默多长期生态研究项目收集的30年数据集。开发的机制模型对于预测未来气候情景下的物种分布至关重要。培养博士后研究人员和一名研究生将为下一代南极科学家做好准备。这个项目的结果将训练来自西南部类似沙漠条件的美国原住民社区的高中生。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。

Part I: Non-technical description: Water is life and nowhere is it more notable than in deserts. Within the drylands on Earth, the Antarctic deserts, represented in this study by the McMurdo Dry Valleys, exemplify life in extreme environments with scarce water, low temperatures and long periods of darkness during the polar winter. There is a scarcity of methods to determine water availability, data necessary to predict which species are successful in the drylands, unless measurements are done manually or with field instruments. This project aims to develop a new method of determining soil moisture and use the new data to identify locations suitable for life. Combining these habitats with known species distributions in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, results from this project will predict which species should be present, and also what is the expected species distribution in a changing environment. In this way the project takes advantage of a combination of methods, from recent remote sensing products, ecological models and 30 years of field collections to bring a prediction of how life might change in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in a warmer, and possibly, moister future climate. This project benefits the National Science Foundation goals of expanding fundamental knowledge of Antarctic biota and the processes that sustain life in extreme environments. The knowledge acquired in this project will be disseminated to other drylands through training of high-school curricular programming in Native American communities of the SouthWest. Part II: Technical description: Terrestrial environments in Antarctica are characterized by low liquid water supply, sub-zero temperatures and the polar night in winter months. During summer, melting of snow patches, seasonal steams from glacial melt and vicinity to lakes provide a variety of environments that maintain life, not yet studied at landscape-scale level for habitat suitability and the processes that drive them. This project proposes to integrate remote sensing, hydrological models and ecological models to establish habitat suitability for species in the McMurdo Dry Valleys based on water availability. The approach is at a landscape level in order to establish present-day and future scenarios of species distribution. There are four main objectives: remote sensing development of moisture levels in soils, combining biological and soil data, building and calibrating models of habitat suitability by combining species distribution and environmental variability and applying statistical species distribution model. The field data to develop habitat suitability and calibration of models will leverage a the 30-year dataset collected by the McMurdo Long-Term Ecological Research program. Mechanistic models developed will be essential to predict species distribution in future climate scenarios. Training of post-doctoral researchers and a graduate student will prepare for the next generation of Antarctic scientists. Results from this project will train high-school students from native American communities in the SouthWest where similar desert conditions exist.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.