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：水就是生命，没有什么地方比沙漠中的水更引人注目。在地球上的旱地内，这项研究中以麦克默多干旱山谷为代表的南极沙漠是极地冬季水稀缺、温度低和长时间黑暗的极端环境中生活的例证。缺乏确定水可获得性的方法，这是预测哪些物种在旱地获得成功所必需的数据，除非手动或使用野外仪器进行测量。该项目旨在开发一种新的确定土壤水分的方法，并使用新的数据来确定适合生命的地点。结合这些栖息地和麦克默多干谷的已知物种分布，该项目的结果将预测哪些物种应该存在，以及在不断变化的环境中预期的物种分布是什么。通过这种方式，该项目利用了多种方法的组合，从最近的遥感产品、生态模型和30年来的实地收集中预测出，在未来更温暖、可能更潮湿的气候下，麦克默多干旱山谷的生命可能会发生什么变化。该项目有益于国家科学基金会的目标，即扩大南极生物群和极端环境中维持生命的过程的基础知识。在这个项目中获得的知识将通过培训西南部美洲原住民社区的高中课程方案传播到其他旱地。第二部分：技术描述：南极洲陆地环境的特点是液态水供应少，气温降至零度以下，冬季为极夜。在夏季，积雪融化、来自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，这些环境尚未在景观尺度上研究栖息地的适宜性和驱动它们的过程。该项目建议将遥感、水文模型和生态模型结合起来，以确定麦克默多干河谷物种的栖息地适宜性。这种方法是在景观层面上进行的，目的是确定物种分布的当前和未来情景。主要目标有四个：遥感土壤水分水平，结合生物和土壤数据，通过结合物种分布和环境变异性建立和校准生境适宜性模型，并应用统计物种分布模型。用于开发栖息地适宜性和模型校准的现场数据将利用麦克默多长期生态研究计划收集的30年数据集。开发的机械模型将对预测未来气候情景中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准备。该项目的结果将培训来自西南部存在类似沙漠条件的美国原住民社区的高中生。该奖项反映了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。

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.