The resilience of savanna ecosystems to changing fire regimes

稀树草原生态系统对不断变化的火灾状况的恢复能力

• 批准号: 2439635
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2439635
• 关键词: resilience; savanna; ecosystems; changing; fire

This project will investigate how changes in fire frequency have influenced the structure and composition of vegetation and soil biogeochemistry in both tropical and temperate savanna ecosystems. The results of this work will address the question of how natural ecosystems will respond to the rapidly changing fire regimes across the globe. Fieldwork will take place in three sites where fire frequency has been experimentally manipulated for >40 years (South Africa, Brazil, and the United States). The fieldwork will characterize the vegetation community to test the hypothesis that frequent burning shifts the plant community to being increasingly sensitive to fire. The labwork involves soil sampling and analysis, which will characterize the storage and turnover of carbon and nutrients via microbial activity assays and organic and inorganic chemistry measurements. These assays will be used to test the hypothesis that fire depletes ecosystem carbon and dampens nutrient turnover, inhibiting vegetation and microbial recovery.

该项目将研究火灾频率的变化如何影响热带和温带稀树草原生态系统中植被和土壤生物地球化学的结构和组成。这项工作的结果将解决自然生态系统如何应对全球快速变化的火灾制度的问题。野外工作将在三个地点进行，这些地点的火灾频率已经被实验性地控制了大约40年（南非、巴西和美国）。野外工作将对植被群落进行表征，以验证频繁燃烧使植物群落对火灾越来越敏感的假设。实验室工作包括土壤取样和分析，这将通过微生物活动分析和有机和无机化学测量来表征碳和营养物质的储存和周转。这些试验将用于验证火灾消耗生态系统碳和抑制养分周转、抑制植被和微生物恢复的假设。