Workshop: Diversity and dynamics of herbaceous plant communities in forest ecosystems

研讨会：森林生态系统中草本植物群落的多样性和动态

• 批准号: 2203958
• 负责人: Simon Queenborough
• 金额: $ 4.66万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2203958&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Workshop; Diversity; dynamics; herbaceous; plant

Much of our understanding of how forests work is based on trees because they are the largest and most obvious organisms in forests. However, trees make up less than one quarter of all the plant species in many forests. Vines, epiphytes ("air plants"), and small plants like ferns and wildflowers are more common and just as diverse as trees. Therefore, our understanding of forest biology is limited because these other plants are often quite different from trees. Small, non-woody plants tend to have different ways of living, growing, and reproducing tree than trees. Also, they may respond quite differently to changes in light, water, nutrients, and human activities. These differences from trees mean that we are still unable to answer important questions about plant diversity. For example, how does diversity on the forest floor change with climate and geographic location? And how do differences in rainfall affect what kinds of plants can grow? If we know the answers to these questions, we can also answer questions such as what conditions allow non-native ‘invasive’ plants to spread? And how will plants on the forest floor respond to increasing temperatures or more intense droughts predicted with climate change? To address this lack of understanding, the researchers will run a workshop where they will determine which questions should be prioritized, accounting for feasibility (i.e., what are the low-hanging fruit?) and urgency (i.e., what are critical knowledge gaps for conservation and management?). The workshop will bring together a diverse group of early-career and experienced researchers, with expertise in herbaceous plant taxonomy and systematics, herbaceous plant ecology, forest ecology, ecological sampling techniques, statistical modeling, conservation, and policy. Participants will be selected from a variety of institutions and countries in temperate and tropical regions. The workshop will result in resources made openly available to the scientific community, including a review of recent important research and top fundamental and applied research questions. Additionally, workshop participants will propose standardized methods to embed inventories of herbaceous plants within existing forest monitoring networks, allowing many other researchers to sample herbaceous plants consistently across a wide variety of forest habitats to address the identified research priorities.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.

我们对森林如何运作的理解大部分是基于树木，因为它们是森林中最大和最明显的生物。然而，在许多森林中，树木占所有植物物种的不到四分之一。藤蔓植物，附生植物（“空气植物”），以及像蕨类植物和野花这样的小植物更常见，就像树木一样多样化。因此，我们对森林生物学的理解是有限的，因为这些其他植物通常与树木完全不同。小型非木本植物的生存、生长和繁殖方式与树木不同。此外，它们可能会对光线、水分、营养和人类活动的变化做出完全不同的反应。这些与树木的差异意味着我们仍然无法回答关于植物多样性的重要问题。例如，森林地面的多样性如何随气候和地理位置而变化？降雨量的差异如何影响植物的生长？如果我们知道这些问题的答案，我们也可以回答这样的问题，什么条件允许非本地的“入侵”植物传播？森林地面上的植物将如何应对气候变化带来的气温上升或更严重的干旱？为了解决这种缺乏理解的问题，研究人员将举办一个研讨会，在那里他们将确定哪些问题应该优先考虑，考虑可行性（即，什么是低挂水果？）和紧急性（即，保护和管理方面的关键知识差距是什么？该研讨会将汇集一群不同的早期职业和经验丰富的研究人员，他们在草本植物分类学和系统学，草本植物生态学，森林生态学，生态采样技术，统计建模，保护和政策方面具有专业知识。与会者将从温带和热带地区的各种机构和国家中选出。研讨会将向科学界公开提供资源，包括审查最近的重要研究以及最重要的基础和应用研究问题。此外，讲习班与会者将提出标准化方法，将草本植物清单纳入现有的森林监测网络，使许多其他研究人员能够在各种各样的森林栖息地中对草本植物进行一致的采样，以解决确定的研究重点。该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。