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

职业：热带到温带森林动态及其对植物性能策略的潜在影响，一种理论数据融合方法

• 批准号: 2239483
• 负责人: Caroline Farrior
• 金额: $ 89.89万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-06-01 至 2028-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2239483&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Tropical; temperate; forest; dynamics

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.

森林是由单独的树木组成的，它们的生长、死亡和繁殖受到降雨、温度、风扰动和邻近树木的遮荫等因素的影响。尽管有这些不同的特征和相互作用，但特定生物群或生境类型(即热带雨林、温带森林)内的森林在全球森林结构上表现出惊人的相似之处。这些相似之处很可能是由于个别树木获得光线的重要性的共性，以及树木之间为获取光线而无处不在的竞争。在这个项目中，研究人员利用史密森的森林全球地球观测站(ForestGEO)，从热带到温带，开发模型并测试关于生物群落内部和跨生物群的森林结构驱动因素的假设。随着模型的完善，研究人员将整合不同的植物策略，并探索对特定生物群结果的影响。这项工作的结果将被纳入地球系统模型，用于预测碳封存，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的结构和动态不同，但这些差异的原因和后果还没有得到很好的描述。最近，研究人员发现，一个简单的树木竞争光照模型，包括随机的林分水平干扰，很好地捕捉到了巴拿马巴罗科罗拉多岛热带森林的质量和数量特征。然而，该模型需要添加最大树木的降级性能，以捕捉华盛顿州Wind River温带森林的结构。这项研究将扩大规模，使用一个广泛的全球ForestGEO数据集，以测试热带和温带森林之间差异的普遍性。此外，该项目将确定这两个生物群之间在森林动态方面可能存在的因果差异。通过改进的模型，研究人员旨在为森林内树木之间的动态相互作用如何随着时间的推移更好地预测林分结构，以及这些模型如何改进地球系统模型提供新的见解。此外，研究人员将得出新的假设，说明关键植物策略上的选择压力的共性和差异，以及森林动态中这些差异可能导致产生和/或维持物种共存的不同机会。由于理论与数据的结合是本研究的关键，本职业项目的教育计划侧重于将理论培训融入标准的本科生和研究生课程。此外，包容性教学方法将通过培训和协作计划，在ForestGEO研究人员的早期职业社区内促进理论和实证工作的进一步整合。该奖项反映了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。