OCE-PRF: Understanding substrate mobility as a disturbance in hard rock marine communities

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。人类活动以各种方式影响海洋生态系统，包括通过全球变暖改变海浪和洋流动态以及改变海底的组成。这些变化反过来又会影响海洋群落的位置和分布。对于软沉积物群落，如沙滩，流体力和沉积物扰动之间的相互作用是很好理解的。这使得科学家能够测量沉积物的流动性，并对人类活动对这些生态系统的影响进行详细的预测。到目前为止，还没有类似于海洋硬岩生态系统沉积物流动性的测量方法。这项研究将研究一种潜在的测量系统，该系统将波浪和洋流的力量与由此产生的对坚硬岩石基质的侵蚀联系起来，并将测试和评估这些干扰模式如何控制群落本身的分布。通过开发和测试这种底物迁移率度量，这项研究将为核心生态假说开辟新的研究途径。此外，这项工作将使管理人员、自然资源保护者和工程师能够更好地预测人为变化对硬岩海洋群落的影响。该项目还将通过(1)通过本科生暑期项目的研究经验获得实地和数据分析经验，(2)通过研究员和本科生学员之间的指导关系实现专业发展，以及(3)通过跨机构协调扩大他们的专业网络，支持对地球科学中代表性较低的群体的培训和教育。生态学中的基本概念，如康奈尔的中间干扰假说和蒙格和萨瑟兰的竞争/捕食/干扰模型，认识到群落存在于物理和生物干扰的复杂马赛克中。由于扰动的规模、原因和后果因系统不同而不同，因此在衡量扰动制度时，这种马赛克提出了挑战。然而，在海洋环境中，底物迁移率是对海洋生态系统存在的干扰影响的一种明确衡量。该项目将确定如何通过与美国地质勘探局地质学家的合作来测量坚硬衬底上的基质迁移率。此外，本研究将通过实验室实验研究底物移动性对底栖生物的干扰机制，并使用野外调查来比较底物移动性的模式与底栖生物群落和物种功能群的分布。明确地量化硬衬底对流体强迫的已实现运动将硬衬底整合到已经很好理解的沉积扰动范例中。这导致了一个可能具有革命性的海洋扰动的普遍框架，因为它允许在从珊瑚礁到深海平原的各种海洋生态系统中提出比较问题。这一机制框架在地貌学和海洋生态学科之间提供了一种新的联系。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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Human actions impact marine ecosystems in a variety of ways, including shifting wave and current dynamics through global warming and altering the composition of the ocean floor. These changes, in turn, affect the location and distribution of marine communities. For soft-sediment communities, such as sandy beaches, the interaction between fluid forces and sediment disturbance is well understood. This allows scientists to measure sediment mobility and to create detailed predictions of the impact of human activities on these ecosystems. To date there are no measurements analogous to sediment mobility available for marine hard rock ecosystems. This research will investigate a potential measurement system which connects the forces of waves and currents to the resulting erosion of hard rock substrates and will test and evaluate how these disturbance patterns govern the distribution of communities themselves. By developing and testing this substrate mobility metric, this research will open new avenues of investigation for core ecological hypotheses. In addition, this work will allow managers, conservationists, and engineers to better predict the impact of human-generated change on hard rock marine communities. This project will also support the training and education of groups underrepresented in the geosciences through (1) field and data analysis experience via Research Experiences for Undergraduates summer programs, (2) professional development via mentoring relationships between the fellow and undergraduate trainees, and (3) the expansion of their professional network via cross-institutional coordination.Disturbance, including fluid forces via waves on rocky shores, is well understood as a community organizing and structuring force. Foundational concepts within ecology, such as Connell’s Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis and Menge and Sutherland’s Competition/Predation/Disturbance model, recognize that communities exist within a complex mosaic of physical and biological disturbance. This mosaic presents challenges when measuring disturbance regimes since the scales, causes, and consequences of disturbance vary between systems. However, in the marine environment, substrate mobility represents an explicit measure of disturbance impact present across marine ecosystems. This project will determine how to measure substrate mobility on hard substrates through collaboration with USGS geologists. In addition, this research will investigate a mechanism for disturbance via substrate mobility on benthic organisms through lab experiments and use field surveys to compare patterns of substrate mobility with the distribution of benthic communities and species functional groups. Explicitly quantifying the realized movement of hard substrate in response to fluid forcing integrates hard substrates into the already well understood sediment disturbance paradigm. This results in a universal framework of marine disturbance that is potentially revolutionary as it allows for comparative questions spanning a huge diversity of marine ecosystems, from coral reefs to the abyssal plain. This mechanistic framework provides a new connection between the disciplines of geomorphology and marine ecology.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.