Collaborative Research: Understanding the impacts of an ongoing megadrought: Synthesizing the role of soil moisture in driving ecosystem fluxes from site to regional scales

合作研究：了解正在进行的特大干旱的影响：综合土壤湿度在驱动生态系统通量从场地到区域尺度方面的作用

• 批准号: 2331162
• 负责人: Steven Kannenberg
• 金额: $ 32.83万
• 依托单位: West Virginia University Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2027-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2331162&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Understanding; impacts; ongoing

Drylands in the American West are currently in the grips of a 23-year long ‘megadrought’, constituting the driest period of the last 1,200 years. This megadrought is an ongoing climate crisis that is severely impacting natural ecosystems, managed forests, agricultural systems, and human water resources. Despite such serious consequences, our understanding of the megadrought is quite limited. Specifically, the research community lacks a comprehensive understanding of how the megadrought has impacted soil moisture, particularly the deeper moisture pools that are critical for vegetation health. There is also a limited understanding of how carbon and water cycling have changed over the last 23 years; an important indicator of ecosystem function that mediates global climate feedbacks. This research enhances our ecological understanding of how drylands have been impacted by the megadrought, which sets the stage for a more predictive understanding of future climate change impacts. This knowledge is transferable to other dryland and non-dryland biomes, as such megadroughts are projected to increase in frequency and severity globally in the coming decades. To accomplish these aims, the research combines hundreds of long-running soil moisture depth profiles with remotely-sensed estimates of shallow soil moisture, deep water availability, and groundwater. These data allow us to assess the impacts of the megadrought on plant-available water, and serve as a crucial validation of these remotely-sensed products for drought monitoring. Data from 21 eddy covariance towers are paired with a new gridded dataset of empirically-modeled ecosystem fluxes to uncover the drivers of dryland ecosystem function, and quantify the impact of the megadrought on carbon-water fluxes at high spatial and temporal resolutions. By synthesizing these data sources their unique strengths are leveraged; addressing detailed mechanistic questions with in situ data, and examining broad trends in carbon-water cycling using modeled and remotely-sensed data. This project is jointly funded by Ecosystem Science and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.

美国西部的干旱地区目前正处于长达23年的“特大干旱”之中，这是过去1,200年来最干旱的时期。这场巨大的气候危机正在严重影响自然生态系统、森林管理、农业系统和人类水资源。尽管有如此严重的后果，我们对这一重大事件的了解还是相当有限的。具体来说，研究界缺乏对megadbrought如何影响土壤水分的全面了解，特别是对植被健康至关重要的深层水分池。人们对过去23年来碳和水循环如何变化的理解也有限;这是生态系统功能的一个重要指标，介导了全球气候反馈。这项研究增进了我们对干旱地区如何受到特大干旱影响的生态理解，为更好地预测未来气候变化影响奠定了基础。这种知识可以转移到其他旱地和非旱地生物群落，因为预计在今后几十年中，全球范围内的特大干旱将更加频繁和严重。为了实现这些目标，该研究将数百个长期运行的土壤水分深度剖面与浅层土壤水分，深层水可用性和地下水的遥感估计相结合。这些数据使我们能够评估megadbrought对植物可用水的影响，并作为这些遥感产品用于干旱监测的重要验证。来自21个涡度协方差塔的数据与一个新的网格化的生态系统通量数据集配对，以揭示旱地生态系统功能的驱动因素，并以高的空间和时间分辨率量化megadbrought对碳-水通量的影响。通过综合这些数据来源，利用其独特的优势;解决详细的机械问题与现场数据，并检查广泛的趋势，在碳-水循环使用建模和遥感数据。该项目由生态系统科学和刺激竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。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。