LTREB: A Mechanistic Understanding of Ecosystem Resilience and Recovery In Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest Experiencing Disturbance

LTREB：对遭受干扰的季节性干旱热带森林生态系统复原力和恢复的机制理解

• 批准号: 2217752
• 负责人: Jennifer Powers
• 金额: $ 59.77万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-01 至 2027-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2217752&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: LTREB; Mechanistic; Understanding; Ecosystem; Resilience

Tropical forests provide habitat for countless organisms and help to protect the Earth’s climate by storing large amounts of carbon in trees and soils. Many of these forests are secondary forests that have regrown after being cleared for cropping or grazing. Secondary forest regeneration in the tropics is not fully understood. This makes it difficult to predict how the characteristics of tropical forests change over time and how quickly they regain important functions like biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. Long-term studies that track the birth, growth, and death of trees and measure other changes as forest ecosystems regrow are necessary to understand how forests change as they develop. This project extends long-term field measurements of forest regeneration in plots of seasonally dry forest in Costa Rica that have different ages and soil types, and then uses these insights to improve biologically realistic simulation models of forest growth. These results have a wide range of applications, from improving restoration projects for carbon storage to simulating the future state of tropical forests under a range of climate scenarios. The core data from this project will be used in an online learning module about tropical ecology for undergraduate students.Long-term data are critical for understanding ecosystem change over time. Eighteen forest plots were established across successional and soil gradients in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and have been measured continuously since 2008. The plots encompass spatial gradients in soil characteristics and large inter-annual variability in climatic conditions, including the strongest drought on record. Forest plots experienced variable mortality in response to the extreme drought of 2015 and are in various stages of recovery. This project extends measurements of the key response variables of biomass, litterfall, tree and woody vine composition and demography, soil biogeochemistry, and frass fall (as an indirect proxy for Lepidoptera larvae abundance) to test five hypotheses addressing biotic and abiotic controls on successional processes as well as the resistance and resilience of dry forest to extreme climate events. This project will generate new fundamental knowledge on how tropical dry forests change through time and space in response to disturbance from land use and drought as well as the roles of two key groups, nitrogen-fixing legume trees and woody vines in mediating these processes. All data, model output, and model code will be freely available to the scientific community in online repositories.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.

热带森林为无数组织提供了栖息地，并通过在树木和土壤中存储大量碳来帮助保护地球的气候。这些森林中的许多是次要森林，在被清除以进行裁剪或磨碎后重新生成。热带地区的次要森林再生尚不完全了解。这使得很难预测热带森林的特征如何随着时间的流逝而变化，以及它们如何继续重要的功能，例如生物多样性保护和碳存储。追踪树木的出生，成长和死亡并衡量其他变化的长期研究是必须了解森林随着森林的发展而变化的必要条件。该项目扩展了具有不同年龄和土壤类型的季节性干燥森林地块中森林再生的长期现场测量，然后使用这些见解来改善森林生长的生物学现实模拟模型。这些结果具有广泛的应用，从改善碳存储的修复项目到在一系列气候场景下模拟热带森林的未来状态。该项目的核心数据将用于有关本科生热带生态学的在线学习模块。长期数据对于理解随着时间的推移而建立了生态系统的变化至关重要。在哥斯达黎加的连续和土壤梯度之间建立了18岁的森林地块，自2008年以来一直在连续衡量的是，在哥斯达黎加的连续层面上，该地块均连接了较大的地块，并在较大的层面上进行了较大的逐步逐步逐渐成分。有记录。森林地块响应2015年的极端干旱而经历了可变的死亡率，并且处于各种康复阶段。该项目扩展了生物量，垃圾，树木和木质藤蔓组成和人口统计学，土壤生物地球化学和弗拉斯跌倒的关键响应变量的测量（作为鳞翅目幼虫抽象的间接代理），以测试五个针对连续的生物和依从性的假设，这些假设是针对连续的生物和依赖性的，以及连续的污染境外和依赖的森林。该项目将产生有关热带干燥森林如何在土地使用和干旱以及两个关键群体，氮含氮豆科树和木质藤蔓中的作用中响应灾难以及在调解这些过程中的作用的新基本知识。所有数据，模型输出和模型代码都将在在线存储库中免费提供给科学界。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响标准，认为通过评估被认为是宝贵的支持。