BRC-BIO: Alpine Hotspots: Nutrient patches facilitate upslope expansion of tropical alpine communities undergoing rapid climate change

BRC-BIO：高山热点：营养斑块促进经历快速气候变化的热带高山群落的上坡扩张

• 批准号: 2217840
• 负责人: Kelsey Reider
• 金额: $ 47.08万
• 依托单位: James Madison 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: 2022-10-01 至 2025-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2217840&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: BRC; BIO; Alpine; Hotspots; Nutrient

Glacier forefield environments have long acted as natural laboratories for understanding the establishment of ecological communities in newly available habitat. There is often a long lag in the initial colonization of plants in alpine ecosystems because of limited soil nutrients. However, there may be strong animal-plant facilitation mechanisms at play, where communal dung deposition by native herbivores creates nutrient hotspots and fuels more rapid plant establishment. The project will define how nutrient hotspots ameliorate extreme abiotic conditions and accelerate primary succession in high-mountain landscapes, facilitating the development of pioneer communities and upslope expansion of plants and other organisms into glacier forefields. The research will provide strong research and professional training and mentoring for students at multiple career stages at a primarily undergraduate institution. Two Master’s students, 6–12 undergraduates, a post-baccalaureate research technician, and at least one local Peruvian student will receive training through this project, equipping the next generation of climate change biologists with skills to address growing challenges in this field. Revealing unexplored processes underlying how ecological communities will keep pace with rapid climate change will enable future experimental and predictive modeling work, which can inform urgently-needed stewardship of lands newly exposed by retreating ice.Animal-plant facilitation might be a more ubiquitous mechanism of primary succession than currently recognized in newly-exposed deglaciating lands worldwide. The lack of understanding of the potentially significant role of animal-mediated facilitation impairs our ability to predict how glacier forefield biodiversity, assemblages, and ecosystem function will develop under rapid climate change. The goal of this proposal is to understand the consequences of nutrient hotspots created by animals in terms of ecosystem succession. This research will help to create a new conceptual model of the earliest stages of ecosystem development in glacier forefields supported by extensive field data, and guide future predictive and experimental work. A multi-scale, field-based approach will reveal how hotspots alter glacier forefield community development. The specific aims are to: 1) define patch-level impacts of hotspots on soil nutrients, microbial biomass, and plant characteristics in glacier forefields; 2) determine landscape-level hotspot effects on plant and microbial community assembly across a 130-year chronosequence of glacier retreat; and 3) define patterns of animal activity and nutrient deposition at hotspots and non-hotspot locations.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.

长期以来，冰川前地环境一直是了解新栖息地生态群落建立的天然实验室。在高山生态系统中，由于土壤养分有限，植物的初始定殖往往有很长的滞后期。然而，可能有很强的动植物促进机制在起作用，当地食草动物的公共粪便沉积创造了营养热点，并促进了植物更快的建立。该项目将确定营养热点如何改善极端的非生物条件，加速高山景观的初级演替，促进先驱社区的发展，以及植物和其他生物向冰川前地的上坡扩张。该研究将为主要本科院校处于多个职业阶段的学生提供强有力的研究和专业培训和指导。两名硕士生，6-12名本科生，一名学士后研究技术人员和至少一名秘鲁当地学生将通过该项目接受培训，为下一代气候变化生物学家提供技能，以应对该领域日益增长的挑战。揭示生态群落如何跟上快速气候变化的未探索过程将使未来的实验和预测建模工作，这可以告知迫切需要的土地管理新暴露的退缩冰。动物-植物促进可能是一个更普遍的初级演替机制比目前公认的全球新暴露的冰川消退的土地。缺乏对动物介导的促进作用的潜在重要作用的理解，削弱了我们预测冰川前场生物多样性、组合和生态系统功能在快速气候变化下将如何发展的能力。该提案的目标是了解动物在生态系统演替方面创造的营养热点的后果。这项研究将有助于建立一个新的概念模型的最早阶段的生态系统发展在冰川前田的广泛的实地数据支持，并指导未来的预测和实验工作。一个多尺度的，基于现场的方法将揭示热点如何改变冰川前田社区的发展。具体目标是：1）确定热点对土壤养分、微生物生物量和冰川前沿植物特征的斑块级影响; 2）确定130年冰川退缩时序中热点对植物和微生物群落组合的斑块级影响;和3）确定热点和非热点地区的动物活动和营养沉积模式，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审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。