BoCP-Implementation:US-Sao Paulo: Living on the edge: plant-animal interactions and the cascading impacts of Amazon forest fragmentation

位于亚马逊盆地的世界上面积最大的热带森林的命运，从根本上与树木物种多样性、自然干扰和人类对景观的修改之间的复杂关系有关。根据这些过程如何与前所未有的高温、干旱和森林砍伐相互作用，一些亚马逊林区可能会失去弹性，并在本世纪中叶经历大规模崩溃。由于热带森林在调节气候和充当巨大的碳汇方面的重要性，这种崩溃将在地方、区域和全球范围内产生负面后果。该项目阐述了森林-农业边界的碎片化不仅从根本上改变了当地气候，从而推动了关键树种的道德，而且还扰乱和取代了在种子传播、养分分配和维持复杂食物网方面发挥关键作用的动物。由于人类的直接和间接影响，这些生态系统的崩溃可能会永久性地改变亚马逊的地貌，但我们对这些复杂系统如何应对目前规模的干扰的了解有限。这项研究项目旨在量化树木特征和部分由动物控制的生态过程之间关系的变化，以确定森林抵御和从日益多样化的干扰中恢复的能力。这项研究的重点是在盆地东南部炎热干燥的农田附近生长的亚马逊森林。该项目是一项合作努力，联合了由美国和巴西科学家组成的多样化和跨学科的团队，并指导两国的研究生和博士后研究人员。这项研究将为理解森林碎片化如何、何时以及为什么导致大规模森林死亡提供有价值的信息。该项目整合了基于野外的森林动态测量和动物排斥实验、森林碎片化的遥感制图和物种分布的统计建模，以研究死亡事件和动物活动导致的功能多样性变化如何影响亚马逊森林边缘的弹性。这些变化表现为干燥-温暖的森林边缘，栖息地的丧失，以及在种植作物的推动下大型哺乳动物饮食习惯的变化。在地方尺度上，该项目将根据森林清单，量化森林边缘效应如何影响干旱和野火后的树木死亡和更新模式。该项目将把范围扩大到区域范围，将收集树木的生态生理特征、反复清查的森林动态以及亚马逊三个地区的动物活动数据。这些互补的数据集有助于扩大我们对全球变化、树木特征和跨气候梯度的更广泛生态背景下的脆弱性之间的相互联系的理解。该项目扩大到亚马逊盆地的规模，利用先进的遥感技术和物种分布模型来量化森林对气候变化和碎片化的脆弱性。研究这些生态系统如何应对多种空间尺度的干扰，从当地到流域范围，该项目渴望提供不仅具有科学启发性的见解，而且对保护和恢复世界上最显著和最重要的生态系统之一至关重要。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。

The fate of the world's most extensive tropical forest located the Amazon basin, is fundamentally linked to the complex relationships between tree species diversity, natural disturbances, human modifications of the landscape. Depending on how these processes interact with unprecedented heat, drought, and forest clearing, some Amazonian forest regions could lose their resilience and experience a large-scale collapse by mid-century. Because of the importance of tropical forests in regulating climate and acting as a massive carbon sink, such a collapse would have negative consequences at local, regional, and global scales. This project addresses how fragmentation at forest-agricultural boundaries fundamentally alters not only the local climate, thereby driving the morality of key tree species, but also disrupts and displaces the animals that play a crucial role in seed dispersal, nutrient distribution, and maintaining complex food webs. The breakdown of these ecosystems through direct and indirect human influence may permanently alter the Amazonian landscape, but our understanding of how these complex systems respond to disturbance at the present scale is limited. This research project aims to quantify how the changes in the relationships between tree traits and ecological processes controlled in part by animals may determine the forest's ability to withstand and recover from the increasing diversity of disturbances. The study focuses on Amazonian forests growing near hot and dry agricultural fields across the southeast portion of the basin. The project is a collaborative effort, uniting a diverse and interdisciplinary team of U.S. and Brazilian scientists and mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from both nations. The research will provide valuable information for understanding how, when, and why forest fragmentation leads to large-scale forest dieback.This project integrates field-based measurements of forest dynamics and animal exclusion experiments, remote sensing mapping of forest fragmentation, and statistical modeling of species distribution to examine how alterations in functional diversity due to mortality events and animal activities shape the resilience of Amazon forest edges. These alterations manifest as dry-warm forest edges, habitat loss, and shifts in the dietary habits of large mammals, driven by cultivated crops. At the local scale, the project will quantify how forest edge effects influence tree mortality and regeneration patterns following droughts and wildfires based on forest inventories. Expanding the scope to a regional scale, the project will gather ecophysiological traits of trees, forest dynamics from repeated inventories, and data on animal activity in three regions of the Amazon. These complementary datasets serve to broaden our understanding of the interconnectedness of global changes, tree traits, and vulnerability within the broader ecological context across a gradient in climate. Zooming out to the Amazon Basin scale, the project leverages advanced remote sensing techniques and species distribution modeling to quantify forest vulnerability to climate change and fragmentation. Examining how these ecosystems respond to disturbances across multiple spatial scales, from the local to the basin-wide, the project aspires to provide insights that are not only scientifically illuminating but also fundamentally essential for the preservation and restoration of one of the world's most remarkable and vital ecosystems.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.