LTER: Biodiversity, Multiple Drivers of Environmental Change and Ecosystem Functioning at the Prairie Forest Border

雪松溪长期生态研究项目旨在了解中西部草原草原和森林的功能，以及这种功能如何受到人类活动的影响。这项研究结合了大型的、重复的、长期的实验和对本地生态系统的长期观察，并利用结果来发展和测试生态系统动力学和功能的理论。这些实验的重点是本地物种的丧失、火灾制度的转变、气候变化、大气二氧化碳浓度升高和氮沉降率升高如何以及为什么影响草原和森林生态系统的生产力、稳定性和功能。随着全球人口接近90亿或100亿，这项研究的结果将有助于为国家和世界面临的一些环境问题提供解决方案。一些人类活动正在削弱世界各地生态系统提供对人类至关重要的商品和服务的能力。雪松溪研究解决了人类活动如何改变自然和管理的草原和森林从大气中去除二氧化碳并将其储存在土壤和植物中、净化地下水、生产可持续生物燃料和增加土壤肥力的能力；并寻求改善和恢复这些能力的方法。该项目将继续其向广大公众创造性地传播结果并向政府官员和机构提供建议的历史。其标志性的专业发展项目培训K-12教师和学生，2011年有6000名教师和学生。该网站的教育项目将继续合作，培训美国原住民学生的教育工作者，并加强与服务不足的城市学校的合作。来自全国各地的本科生以及研究生和博士后研究人员将通过这个高度整合的项目进行培训。

The Cedar Creek Long Term Ecological Research program is designed to understand how the prairie grasslands and forests of the Midwest function and how this functioning may be influenced by human activities. The research combines large, well-replicated, long-term experiments with long-term observations in native ecosystems, and uses the results to develop and test theories of ecosystem dynamics and functioning. The experiments focus on how and why the loss of native species, shifts in fire regimes, climate change, elevated atmospheric CO2, and elevated rates of nitrogen deposition affect the productivity, stability and functioning of prairie and forest ecosystems. The results of this research will help to provide solutions to some of the environmental problems the nation and world face as global population approaches 9 or 10 billion people. Some human actions are decreasing the ability of ecosystems around the world to provide goods and services vital to humanity. Cedar Creek research addresses how human activities alter the ability of natural and managed grasslands and forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmospheric and store it in soils and plants, purify groundwater, produce sustainable biofuels, and increate soil fertility; and seeks ways that these abilities can be improved and restored. The program will continue its history of creative dissemination of results to the broader public and of advising government official and agencies. Its signature professional development program trains both K-12 teachers and students, and included 6000 teachers and students in 2011. The site's education program will continue partnerships to train educators of Native American students and strengthen engagement with urban, underserved schools. Diverse undergraduate students from across the country together with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers will be trained through this highly integrative program.