A New Model and Experiments Describing Fur Heat and Mass Transfer

拟议的研究将重点放在一个机械模型上，以了解室外环境中毛皮、羽毛或草或农作物等多孔介质中同时存在的热流和水流。了解热通量和水通量很重要，因为它们是动物生长和繁殖能力的关键部分。如果没有对这些通量的机械理解，就必须对每一种新情况进行经验测量。这项工作很重要，因为它将导致了解动物种群和群落动态，并了解气候、疾病和毒物等多种低水平应激对这些动态的影响。它还为开发草和作物的一般小气候模型提供了基本基础，草和作物是小型脊椎动物和无脊椎动物的“家园”(构成微环境)。这项研究的结果还可以应用于：1)评估气候变化对动物生长和繁殖潜力的影响；2)评估基因工程对动物皮毛特性异速生长变化的影响，因为它影响牛奶或肉类生产的饲料效率；3)评估不同气候下不同的、更节能的家畜舍；4)了解动物分布限制的各个方面，以及它们在不同气候变化情景下可能发生的变化；5)评估传染病和低水平毒物对动物在不同环境中生长和繁殖能力的影响。

The research proposed will focus on a mechanistic model for understanding simultaneous heat and water fluxes in porous media such as fur, feathers or grasses or crops in outdoor environments. Understanding heat and water fluxes is important because they are a critical part of an animal's capacity to grow and reproduce. Without a mechanistic understanding of these fluxes, empirical measurements must be made for each new situation. This work is important because it will lead to understanding animal population and community dynamics and to understanding the influences of multiple low level stresses, such as climate, disease and toxicants on those dynamics. It also provides a fundamental basis for developing general microclimate models for grasses and crops, which are "home" (constitute the microenvironments) for small vertebrates and invertebrates. Results from this research can also be applied to: 1) assessment of impact of climate change on animal growth and reproduction potential; 2) assessment of genetic engineering of changes in animal allometry of fur properties as it affects feed efficiency for production of milk or meat; 3) assessment of different, more energy efficient domestic animal housing in different climates; 4) understanding aspects of the limits to animal distributions and how they might change for different climate change scenarios; 5) assessment of the impact of infectious diseases and low level toxicants on capacity of animals to grow and reproduce in different environments.