NI: The functional ecology of alpine systems; a global network

山地生态系统遍布各大洲，并创造了地球上最具活力的生物群落之一。它们具有全球意义，因为地球上50%的饮用水来自山地生态系统，12亿人生活在山区附近，地球陆地面积的24%位于山区，山地生态系统是具有吸引力的景观，为复兴、娱乐和文化服务提供了机会。我们不仅从山地景观中获得了这些直接的好处，而且它们也是高度生物多样性的生态系统，许多物种只存在于高高山环境中。这些珍稀物种的生物避难所受到气候和土地利用变化的威胁，越来越多的观察表明，山顶正在失去这些珍稀植物物种。尽管我们知道地上的生物多样性，但我们对生物多样性知之甚少，事实上，对生活在地下土壤中的生物的活动知之甚少。正是这些生物维持养分，将碳循环到土壤有机质中，并支撑着世界各地山区的可持续性，但对这些生物的威胁却很少得到解决。因此，迫切需要了解高山环境中地下生物的性质，以及这些生物如何应对气候的快速变化和土地利用的变化。为了解决全球高寒地区功能生态学和敏感性方面的知识差距，我们将组建一个新的全球高寒专家网络，以领导高寒地区土壤生物活动的“全球指纹”。我们将穿越世界上所有主要的高山地区，对生活在土壤中的微生物的大小和活动进行分析。然后，我们将把重点放在关键地点，模拟可能威胁这些生态系统的极端气候，然后测量对土壤生物的影响。具体来说，我们会问：1。从功能生态学的角度来看，我们对全球高山了解多少？我们将利用从网络中收集到的专业知识，深入研究文献和专业知识，对我们目前对全球生物群落的理解进行科学综合。高山土壤如何应对极端气候事件？我们将在不同的高山环境中收集样本，模拟干旱和极端降雨事件，并测量对土壤生物学的影响3。我们如何设计一个实验，在探索气候对高山生态系统的影响方面具有全球相关性？我们将使用全球综合的结果，加上极端事件实验的数据，来指导我们未来解决关键问题的实验设计。潜在的应用和好处。我们将利用这个网络生成新的数据，让我们第一次了解高山土壤生物的活动。这些信息将使我们了解这些生态系统面临的威胁，最终建立长期实验，使我们能够看到这些生态系统如何应对气候和土地利用的变化。只有通过共同努力，我们才能利用我们的专业知识和现有的网络来应对这一新的紧迫挑战，使我们了解如何最好地保护这些宝贵的生态系统，使它们继续为动植物生物多样性提供避风港，并为我们提供食物、水、木材和居住场所。这些数据将通过新知识的产生使科学界受益，但也将巩固对高山的整体理解，从而有助于可持续管理。我们还将通过我们的外展活动，与周围的人们一起探索功能土壤生态学，并通过“我的山很重要”平台发起对我们的山所面临的威胁的讨论。

ContextMountain ecosystems are found on every continent, and create one of the most dynamic biomes on earth. They are globally significant in that 50% of the of the planet's drinking water comes from mountain ecosystems, 1.2 billion people live within the vicinity of mountains, 24% of the earth's terrestrial landmass is in mountain regions, and mountain ecosystems are attractive landscapes that provide opportunities for rejuvenation, recreation, and cultural services. Not only do we gain these direct benefits from mountainous landscapes, but they are also highly biodiverse ecosystems, with many species found only in the high alpine environment. These biological refuges for rare species are threatened by climate and land-use change, and there are growing observations that mountain summits especially are losing these rare plant species. Despite our knowledge on the biodiversity above-ground, we have scare knowledge on the biodiversity, and indeed the activity, of organisms that live below-ground, in the soil. It is these organisms that maintain nutrients, cycle carbon into soil organic matter, and underpin the sustainability of mountainous regions worldwide, yet threats to these organisms are poorly reconciled. There is therefore an urgent need to understand the nature of below-ground life in alpine environments, and how these organisms may respond to rapid changes in climate, and shifts in land-use. Aims and objectivesTo address this knowledge gap of functional ecology and sensitivity in the global alpine, we will form a new global network of alpine specialists from around the world, to lead a 'global fingerprint' of the activity of soil organisms in alpine regions. We will cut across all the major alpine regions of the world, and carry out analysis of the size and activity of the microbes that live in soil. We will then focus on key locations, to simulate climate extremes, which may threaten these ecosystems, and then measure the impact on soil organisms. Specifically, we will ask:1. What do we know about the global alpine from the perspective of functional ecology?a. We will use gathered expertise from the network to probe deeply into the literature and expert knowledge to make a scientific synthesis of our current understanding of this global biome2. How will alpine soils respond to extreme climate events?a. We will collect samples from different alpine environments and simulate drought and extreme rainfall events, and measure the impact on soil biology3. How can we design an experiment that will be globally relevant at exploring climate impacts on alpine ecosystems?a. We will use output from our global synthesis, plus data from our extreme events experiment, to guide the design of our future experiments addressing key questions.Potential applications and benefits.We will use this network to generate new data, giving us insight for the first time on the activity of alpine soil organisms. This information will allow us to understand threats to these ecosystems, ultimately to establish long-term experiments that allow us to see how these ecosystems respond to changes in climate and land-use. Only by working together, can we use our expertise and existing networks to tackle this new and urgent challenge, giving us vital understanding of how best to safeguard these valuable ecosystems so that they continue to provide a harbour for plant and animal biodiversity, and provide us with food, water, timber and a place to live. These data will benefit the scientific community through new knowledge generation, but will also underpin a holistic understanding of the alpine that will contribute to sustainable management. We will also, through our outreach activities, engage with people around to explore functional soil ecology, and initiate a discussion on the threats to our mountains through the 'my mountains matter' platform.