Postdoctoral Fellowship: EAR-PF: Taxon-Specific Cross-Scale Responses to Aridity Gradients through Time and across Space in the NW Great Basin of the United States

博士后奖学金：EAR-PF：美国西北部大盆地随时间和空间的干旱梯度的分类单元特异性跨尺度响应

• 批准号: 2305325
• 负责人: Sean Hixon
• 金额: $ 18万
• 依托单位: Hixon, Sean W
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-01-01 至 2025-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2305325&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; EAR; PF; Taxon

Biodiversity supports human livelihoods and health by providing clean air, natural resources, and food security. Small mammals in particular help maintain healthy soils, spread seeds and ensure they germinate, and feed predators (for example, owls that eat mice). As humans use natural resources and contribute to climate change, we need to identify ways to conserve small mammal diversity. This project will help us understand how some small mammals, like woodrats and ground squirrels, in the Great Basin of the western U.S. responded to past changes in vegetation and episodes of climate drying that are in some ways similar to what’s happening now. Specifically, by analyzing small mammal bones deposited in caves over the past 16,000 years, we will test ideas about 1) which types of small mammals are particularly sensitive to climate drying and 2) whether ongoing changes in climate or land use are a greater threat to these animals today. Results from this research will help people make decisions about biodiversity conservation and land use planning. Findings will also be shared with the general public so that everyone can learn how understanding the past can help us do a better job of caring for our planet today. Despite clear evidence that climate disruption and human activities threaten biodiversity, ecological studies typically fall short of identifying the cross-scale responses of species and their communities to accelerating environmental change. Integrating geohistorical data spanning long temporal scales with modern data arrayed across environmental gradients in space can help us understand shifting ecological communities as products of both modern and historical processes. This project combines taxon-specific stable isotope and AMS 14C chronologies with existing paleoenvironmental proxies to characterize the divergent responses of specialist and generalist small mammals in the Great Basin to aridification over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Study of mesic and xeric-adapted pairs of species belonging to both woodrats (Neotoma spp.) and ground squirrels (Urocitellus spp.) will test the extent to which paleoecological patterns can predict the habitat use of modern populations. This work involves multiple cave sites spanning the last ~16,000 years thar are arrayed across a modern latitudinal aridity gradient in the understudied northwestern Great Basin and integration with data from modern sites arrayed along a nearby elevation gradient from the Alvord Desert up Steens Mountain in southeastern Oregon. The project involves multiple forms of student mentorship and the design of a paleoecology-focused interactive museum display and video, in collaboration with the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History.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.

生物多样性通过提供清洁的空气、自然资源和粮食安全来支持人类的生计和健康。特别是小型哺乳动物有助于保持土壤健康，传播种子并确保它们发芽，并喂养捕食者（例如，吃老鼠的猫头鹰）。由于人类使用自然资源并导致气候变化，我们需要找到保护小型哺乳动物多样性的方法。这个项目将帮助我们了解美国西部大盆地的一些小型哺乳动物，如林鼠和地松鼠，如何应对过去植被的变化和气候干燥的事件，这些变化在某些方面与现在发生的情况相似。具体来说，通过分析过去16,000年来沉积在洞穴中的小型哺乳动物骨骼，我们将测试以下想法：1）哪些类型的小型哺乳动物对气候干燥特别敏感; 2）气候或土地利用的持续变化是否对这些动物构成更大的威胁。这项研究的结果将有助于人们做出有关生物多样性保护和土地利用规划的决定。研究结果也将与公众分享，以便每个人都能了解了解过去如何帮助我们更好地照顾我们今天的地球。尽管有明确的证据表明气候破坏和人类活动威胁生物多样性，但生态研究通常无法确定物种及其社区对加速环境变化的跨尺度反应。将跨越长时间尺度的地史数据与空间环境梯度排列的现代数据相结合，可以帮助我们理解生态群落的变化是现代和历史过程的产物。该项目结合了特定分类群的稳定同位素和AMS 14 C年表与现有的古环境代理，以表征大盆地的专业和通才的小型哺乳动物在多个空间和时间尺度上的干旱化的不同反应。两种林鼠（Neotoma spp.）和地松鼠（尾松鼠属）将测试古生态模式在多大程度上可以预测现代人口的栖息地使用。这项工作涉及多个洞穴遗址跨越过去的16,000年，它们排列在未充分研究的西北大盆地的现代纬度干旱梯度上，并与沿着附近的海拔梯度排列的现代遗址的数据相结合，从阿尔沃德沙漠到俄勒冈州东南部的Steens山。该项目涉及多种形式的学生指导和设计一个以古生态学为重点的互动博物馆展示和视频，与俄勒冈州大学自然和文化历史博物馆合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。