RCN: PSInet - A Global Water Potential Network

RCN：PSInet - 全球水势网络

• 批准号: 2243900
• 负责人: Kimberly Novick
• 金额: $ 49.92万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 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: 2023-03-01 至 2028-02-29
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2243900&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RCN; PSInet; Global; Water; Potential

The ability to prepare for life on a warming planet requires a predictive understanding of how increasing drought and heat stress will affect terrestrial plants and the many services they provide, including food and timber production, carbon sequestration and storage, and the maintenance of biodiverse ecosystems. The water potential of soils and plants – which can be imagined as the blood pressure of the natural world – directly controls the flow of water through ecosystems and is a key regulator of the risk of plant mortality during droughts and heat waves. However, observations of water potential (commonly abbreviated with the Greek letter ‘Psi’) are frequently scarce, inaccessible, and plagued by methodological challenges that hinder the synthetic research necessary to anticipate, and prepare for, climate change impacts in natural and managed ecosystems. PSInet – a new network of data and people - will confront this information gap by: [1] promoting consistent collection and interpretation of water potential data by a global community of scientists through shared protocols, best practices, and early career training, [2] creating an open, global database for plant and soil water potential time series, and [3] supporting the synthesis of the PSInet database by a diverse community of scientists and practitioners to address previously intractable questions concerning plant responses to drought and heat stress. Gradients in water potential are the energetic basis for the flux of water through plants, and water potential is a determinant of how much carbon plants remove from the atmosphere, how much water they use in the process, and the likelihood that plants survive droughts. However, while the study of plant water potential is theory rich, it is relatively data poor. Observations of water potential in soils and plants are relatively sparse, discontinuous, and unaggregated. Closing this information gap is fundamental for addressing unresolved theoretical controversies about plant response to drought and heat stress, and for making confident predictions about ecosystem function in a warming world. PSInet will rise to this challenge by building a global water potential database with multiple points of connection to related environmental observation networks, enabling cross-site synthesis necessary for inference at regional and global scales, and providing a much-needed platform for testing and refining modeling schemes. We will also craft community-driven protocols and best practices to support water potential measurement and interpretation, with a particular emphasis on emerging approaches for continuous water potential observations, which hold tremendous promise but are currently hampered by methodological difficulties. Finally, the project will create a PSInet ‘Community of Practice’ to encourage data submissions, elevate the end-use of the database, and broaden the intellectual, demographic, and geographic diversity of ecophysiological research. Together, PSInet will provide the data, collaborative platforms, and training necessary to confront previously intractable questions about plant responses to drought and heat stress.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.

为在一个变暖的星球上生活做好准备的能力需要预测性地了解干旱和热应力的增加将如何影响陆生植物及其提供的许多服务，包括粮食和木材生产，碳固存和储存，以及维护生物多样性生态系统。土壤和植物的水势--可以想象为自然界的血压--直接控制着水在生态系统中的流动，是干旱和热浪期间植物死亡风险的关键调节器。然而，对水势的观测（通常缩写为希腊字母“Psi”）往往稀缺，无法获得，并受到方法学挑战的困扰，这些挑战阻碍了预测和准备自然和管理的生态系统中气候变化影响所必需的综合研究。PSInet --一个新的数据和人员网络--将通过以下方式应对这一信息差距：[1]通过共享协议、最佳实践和早期职业培训，促进全球科学家社区对水势数据的一致收集和解释，[2]为植物和土壤水势时间序列创建一个开放的全球数据库，[3]支持由不同科学家和从业者组成的社区对PSInet数据库进行综合，以解决以前关于植物对干旱和热胁迫反应的棘手问题。水势中的能量是水通过植物的能量基础，而水势是植物从大气中去除多少碳、在此过程中使用多少水以及植物在干旱中存活的可能性的决定因素。然而，植物水势的研究虽然理论丰富，但数据相对较少。对土壤和植物水势的观测是相对稀疏、不连续和不聚集的。缩小这一信息差距对于解决有关植物对干旱和热胁迫反应的尚未解决的理论争议，以及对变暖世界中的生态系统功能做出可靠的预测至关重要。PSInet将应对这一挑战，建立一个全球水潜力数据库，与相关环境观测网络有多个连接点，能够进行区域和全球范围内推理所需的跨站点综合，并为测试和改进建模方案提供急需的平台。我们还将制定社区驱动的协议和最佳实践，以支持水势测量和解释，特别强调持续水势观测的新兴方法，这些方法具有巨大的前景，但目前受到方法学困难的阻碍。最后，该项目将创建一个PSInet“实践社区”，以鼓励提交数据，提升数据库的最终用途，并扩大生态生理学研究的知识，人口和地理多样性。PSInet将共同提供数据、合作平台和必要的培训，以应对以前难以解决的关于植物对干旱和高温胁迫的反应的问题。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。