NSFDEB-NERC: Gigante: Quantifying and upscaling the causes and drivers of death for giant tropical trees

NSFDEB-NERC：Gigante：量化和升级巨型热带树木死亡的原因和驱动因素

• 批准号: 2241507
• 负责人: Evan Gora
• 金额: $ 143.84万
• 依托单位: Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Inc.
• 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 2026-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2241507&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSFDEB; NERC; Gigante; Quantifying; upscaling

This project – named Gigante - aims to understand when, where, and why the largest trees in tropical forests die. The research is important because the largest 1% of trees contain enormous amounts of carbon: about half of all carbon stored in plants of these forests. However, we do not know what kills these trees and therefore can’t predict how they might fare in the future or their impact on climate. Gigante will use drones to guide field teams to locate and describe thousands of giant tree deaths in tropical forests around the world. These data will then be used to predict when and where other giant trees will likely die in the future and to improve our understanding of how carbon cycles on our planet today. Gigante’s outcomes are crucial to a better understanding of how vulnerable tropical forests are to environmental change. The project will train new and aspiring scientists across an international network in the use of modern technology for studying giant trees, generate publicly accessible data on all giant tree deaths to help satellite experts and others monitor forests, and generate new software and training materials to help scientists and land managers monitor the health of forests worldwide.Gigante will locate giant tree mortality events using multi-platform, high-frequency remote sensing of 7,500 hectares of tropical forest across five “super sites.” These data will facilitate targeted field surveys using detailed state-of-the art protocols to assign proximate agents of mortality to recently dead trees in an unprecedentedly large field study. The researchers will integrate these data with information about climate, topography, canopy structure, and tree traits to validate mechanistic models of tree mortality risk. Finally, combining these risk models with forest plots and satellite LiDAR, they will evaluate how drivers of giant tree death predict spatial variation in forest dynamics, structure, and carbon storage. In the course of this project, Gigante will produce software and videos to facilitate the use of these methods elsewhere, and provide training and capacity building to scientists across this collaborative network.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.

这个名为Gigante的项目旨在了解热带森林中最大的树木何时，何地以及为什么死亡。这项研究很重要，因为最大的1%的树木含有大量的碳：大约一半的碳储存在这些森林的植物中。然而，我们不知道是什么杀死了这些树木，因此无法预测它们未来的情况或它们对气候的影响。Gigante将使用无人机引导现场团队定位和描述世界各地热带森林中数千棵大树的死亡。这些数据将用于预测未来其他巨树可能在何时何地死亡，并提高我们对当今地球碳循环的理解。Gigante的成果对于更好地理解热带森林对环境变化的脆弱性至关重要。该项目将通过一个国际网络培训新的和有抱负的科学家使用现代技术研究巨树，生成所有巨树死亡的公开数据，以帮助卫星专家和其他人监测森林，并生成新的软件和培训材料，以帮助科学家和土地管理者监测世界各地的森林健康。Gigante将使用多平台定位巨树死亡事件，对5个“超级地点”的7，500公顷热带森林进行高频遥感。这些数据将有助于有针对性的实地调查，使用详细的最先进的协议，以分配最近死亡的树木在一个前所未有的大规模实地研究的死亡率接近代理。研究人员将把这些数据与气候、地形、树冠结构和树木特征等信息结合起来，以验证树木死亡风险的机制模型。最后，将这些风险模型与森林地块和卫星激光雷达相结合，他们将评估巨树死亡的驱动因素如何预测森林动态，结构和碳储量的空间变化。在这个项目的过程中，Gigante将制作软件和视频，以促进这些方法在其他地方的使用，并为这个合作网络中的科学家提供培训和能力建设。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。