MRI: Acquisition of Instrumentation to Enhance Faculty-Student Research in Community Ecology and Biogeochemistry

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该奖项为圣凯瑟琳大学提供资金，用于购买一套仪器，用于分析土壤、植物组织和水样的营养成分。这将使强调生态系统中养分循环与植物-土壤和群落相互作用之间关系的研究成为可能。玛莎·菲利普斯博士将使用该设备进行湿地生态系统中入侵物种和长期植物群落动态的研究。湿地入侵草Phalaris arundinacea入侵的时空格局表明，养分有效性在入侵风险中起着重要作用。该设备将用于评估营养状况和群落入侵之间的联系，以及在入侵物种和本地物种之间驱动竞争性相互作用的营养物质。了解养分有效性与入侵物种之间的联系将有助于更好地控制入侵物种，从而保护生物多样性和自然生态系统功能，并防止经济损失。Jill Welter博士的工作重点是河流网络中食物网结构和营养循环的整合，提供生物群落与碳、氮、磷循环之间的定量联系。这些营养库的量化将进一步加深我们对潜在限制性营养物质的可用性和资源化学计量学以及食物网结构对营养物质转化和向下游生态系统释放的影响的理解。这项工作强调可能影响固氮速率的生物相互作用，不同程度地影响氮和磷的运输。这对于理解氮和磷供应的变化（通常是人类投入的结果）如何影响养分的吸收和保留并向下游传递尤为重要。该仪器将大大提高师生在社区和生态系统科学研究方面的知识范围，并将整合到以研究为基础的生物和化学本科课程中。在学士学位阶段，圣凯瑟琳大学是一所女子文理学院，许多学生（约25%）认为自己是多元文化的，27%是第一代大学生；因此，这些设备将帮助我们为女性和有色人种学生在研究生院和科学事业中取得成功做好准备。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This award provides funds to St. Catherine University to acquire a suite of instrumentation for analysis of the nutrient content of soil, plant tissue, and water samples. This will make possible research emphasizing the relationship between nutrient cycling and both plant-soil and community interactions in ecosystems. Dr. Martha Phillips will use the equipment for research focused on invasive species and long-term plant community dynamics in wetland ecosystems. Observed spatial and temporal patterns in invasion by Phalaris arundinacea (an invasive grass in wetlands) suggest that nutrient availability plays a large role in invasion risk. The equipment will be used to assess links between nutrient status and community invasion, as well as nutrients as driving competitive interactions between invasive and native species. Understanding the linkages between nutrient availability and invasive species will allow for better control of invasive species, thereby preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystem functioning, and preventing economic damage. The work of Dr. Jill Welter focuses on the integration of food web structure and nutrient cycling in river networks, providing quantitative linkages between communities of organisms and C, N, and P cycling. The quantification of these nutrient pools will further our understanding of the influence of the availability and resource stoichiometry of potentially limiting nutrients and food web structure on nutrient transformation and release to downstream ecosystems. This work emphasizes biotic interactions that may influence rates of nitrogen fixation, differentially affecting N and P transport. This is especially important in understanding how changes in N and P supply, so often a result of human inputs, influence nutrient uptake and retention and are transmitted downstream. The instrumentation will strongly enhance the intellectual scope of faculty-student research in community and ecosystem science and will be integrated into research-based undergraduate curricula in biology and chemistry. At the baccalaureate level, St. Catherine University is a liberal arts institution for women where many students (~25%) identify as multicultural and 27% are first generation college students; thus the equipment will help us to prepare women and students of color to succeed in graduate school and scientific careers.