CAREER: Tropical to temperate forest dynamics and their potential influences on plant performance strategies, a theory-data fusion approach

森林是由个体树木组成的，它们的生长、死亡和繁殖受到降雨、温度、风的干扰以及邻近树木的遮蔽等因素的影响。尽管特征和相互作用的多样性，在特定生物群落或生境类型（即，热带雨林、温带森林），显示出地球仪森林结构的惊人相似性。这些相似之处可能是由于个体树木获得光线的重要性以及树木之间对光线的竞争的普遍性。在这个项目中，研究人员利用史密森尼的森林全球地球观测站（ForestGEO），从热带到温带，开发模型和测试有关生物群落内和生物群落之间森林结构驱动因素的假设。随着模型的完善，研究人员将结合不同的植物策略，并探索对生物群系特定结果的影响。这项工作的结果将纳入用于预测碳固存的地球系统模型，从而预测森林在减缓或加速气候变化方面的作用。该项目还为早期职业科学家提供培训机会，以开发和实施整合经验数据和理论的新工具。热带和温带森林生物群落的结构和动态不同，但这些差异的原因和后果没有很好的特点。最近，研究人员发现，一个简单的模型，树木竞争的光，其中包括随机站水平干扰很好地捕捉定性和定量特征的巴罗科罗拉多岛，巴拿马的热带森林。然而，该模型需要增加最大的树木的性能下降，以捕捉温德河，华盛顿州的温带森林的结构。这项研究将扩大规模，使用广泛的全球ForestGEO数据集，以测试热带和温带森林之间的差异的一般性。此外，该项目将确定这两个生物群落之间森林动态的可能因果差异。通过改进的模型，研究人员的目标是为森林中树木之间的动态相互作用如何更好地预测林分结构提供新的见解，以及这些模型如何改进地球系统模型。 此外，研究人员还将提出关于关键植物策略选择压力的共性和差异的新假设，以及森林动态中这些差异导致产生和/或维持物种共存的不同机会的潜力。由于理论与数据的整合对本研究至关重要，因此本CAREER项目的教育计划侧重于将理论培训整合到标准的本科生和研究生课程中。此外，包容性的教学方法将被用来促进理论和经验工作的进一步整合，通过培训和合作计划的早期职业社区的ForestGEO researchers.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Forests are made up of individual trees whose growth, death, and reproduction are influenced by things like rainfall, temperature, wind disturbances, and the shading by neighboring trees. Despite this diversity of traits and interactions, forests within specific biomes or habitat types (i.e., tropical rainforests, temperate forests), show striking similarities in forest structure across the globe. It is likely that these similarities are due to the commonalities of the importance of access to light for individual trees and the ubiquity of competition among trees for that light. In this project, researchers leverage the Smithsonian’s Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO), from the tropics to the temperate zone, to develop models and test hypotheses regarding the drivers of forest structure within and across biomes. As models are refined, the researchers will incorporate different plant strategies and explore the implications for biome-specific outcomes. The results of this work will be incorporated into the earth system models used to predict carbon sequestration and thus the role of forests in slowing or accelerating climate change. The project also offers training opportunities for early career scientists to develop and implement new tools for integrating empirical data and theory. The structure and dynamics of tropical and temperate forest biomes differ, but the causes and consequences of these differences are not well characterized. Recently, the researchers found that a simple model of tree competition for light that includes stochastic stand-level disturbances nicely captures qualitative and quantitative features of the tropical forest of Barro Colorado Island, Panama. The model, however, requires the addition of decreased performance of the largest trees to capture the structure of the temperate forest of Wind River, WA. This research will scale up, using an extensive global ForestGEO dataset, to test the generality of the differences between tropical and temperate forests. Moreover, this project will identify the likely causal differences in forest dynamics between these two biomes. With the refined model, the researchers aim to contribute new insights into how dynamic interactions among trees within forests will better predict stand structure over time, and how these models can improve earth system models. Further, the researchers will then draw new hypotheses about the commonalities and differences of selective pressures on key plant strategies and the potential for these differences in forest dynamics to result in differing opportunities for generating and/or maintaining species coexistence. As the integration of theory with data is critical to this research, the education plan of this CAREER project focuses on the integration of theory training into standard undergraduate and graduate coursework. Further, the inclusive teaching methodologies will be used to foster further integration of theory and empirical work within the early career community of ForestGEO researchers through a training and collaboration program.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.