Dimensions US-BIOTA-Sao Paulo: Assembly and evolution of the Amazonian biota and its environment: an integrated approach

亚马逊是地球上最具代表性的生物多样性和地方性中心，由于其对全球系统生态学的贡献，它是最重要的陆地生物群系之一。这个项目试图回答生物多样性科学中的一个首要问题：现代亚马逊生物群及其环境是如何跨越时空聚集在一起的？该研究旨在通过比较的方法，综合系统学、种群生物学、生态系统结构和功能、地质学、地球系统建模和遥感以及环境史等学科，了解晚新近纪-近代亚马逊河流域的进化和环境生态历史。该项目还研究了这一时期的生物和环境变化如何影响亚马逊生物地球化学流动的功能多样性，以及这些变化如何反过来塑造了今天所看到的生物多样性的规模，以及生物地球化学循环的全球尺度变化的历史。该项目是巴西科学家和资助机构的合作项目，代表了迄今为止对亚马逊生物多样性及其历史最全面的研究。所采用的方法描述了一种方法模板，用于分析大型生态复杂景观中有关生物和环境变化历史的信息，这些信息可以推广到其他系统。该项目为正规和非正规教育创建了一个大框架，包括培训学生、开发一个大型亚马逊博物馆展览、为K-12 STEM教师举办讲习班、在专业教育期刊上发表出版物，以及一个门户网站“亚马逊生物多样性进化百科全书”，该门户网站将向公众提供所有结果，并作为一个关于亚马逊生物多样性及其全球重要性的信息平台。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

Amazonia is Earth's most iconic center of biological diversity and endemism and is among the most important terrestrial biomes due to its contributions to global systems ecology. This project seeks to answer an overarching question in biodiversity science: How was the modern Amazonian biota and its environment assembled across space and time? The research is designed to understand the evolutionary and environmental-ecological history of late Neogene-Recent Amazonia through a comparative approach that integrates across the disciplines of systematics, population biology, ecosystem structure and function, geology, Earth systems modeling and remote sensing, and environmental history. The project also investigates how biotic and environmental change over this time-period influenced Amazonian functional diversity in biogeochemical flows, and how these, in turn, shaped the dimensions of biodiversity seen today as well as the history of global-scale changes in biogeochemical cycling. The project, which is a collaboration with Brazilian scientists and funding agencies, represents the most integrative examination of Amazonian biodiversity and its history to date. The approaches taken describe a methodological template for analyzing information about the history of biotic and environmental change across large, ecologically complex landscapes that can be generalized to other systems. The project creates a large framework for formal and informal education including the training of students, development of a major museum exhibit on Amazonia, workshops for K-12 STEM teachers, publications in professional educational journals, and a web portal, The Evolutionary Encyclopedia of Amazonian Biodiversity, that will make all results available to the public, as well as serve as an informational platform about Amazonian biodiversity and its global importance. This award is being co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.