EAGER: Managing our expectations: quantifying and characterizing misleading trajectories in ecological processes

生态学的一个基本问题是了解如何扩大发现的规模：从实验室或地块观察到的模式到实地或地区，或者在短期观察到长期趋势和轨迹之间架起桥梁。pi提出了一种方法，可以直接解决生态观测的时间尺度问题，该方法涉及重复使用20多个长期生态研究（LTER）站点的数据，这是自20世纪80年代初以来NSF的一个项目。pi打算利用一种自动化的方法，从现有的长期时间序列中重复采样移动窗口的数据，并分析这些采样数据，就好像它们代表了整个数据集一样，来弥合短期观测和长期趋势之间的差距。通过编译用于描述采样数据中的关系的典型统计数据，并通过重复采样，结果将为以下问题提供见解：在短期数据中观察到的趋势有多经常被误导，我们是否可以使用这些趋势的特征来预测我们被误导的可能性？将收集再利用LTER数据的经验，并与生态学和开放科学界分享。该项目由美国国家科学基金会公共访问计划提供支持，该计划由美国国家科学基金会高级网络基础设施办公室代表基金会管理。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A fundamental problem in ecology is understanding how to scale discoveries: from patterns observed in the lab or the plot to the field or the region, or bridging between short term observations to long term trends and trajectories. The PIs propose a method to directly address the temporal aspects of scaling ecological observations, which involves reusing data from the two dozen Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites, an NSF program in place since the early 1980s. The PIs intend to bridge the gap between short-term observations and the long-term trends using an automated approach of repeatedly sampling moving windows of data from existing long-term time series, and analyzing these sampled data as if they represented the entire dataset. By compiling typical statistics used to describe the relationship in the sampled data and through repeated samplings, the results will provide insights to the questions, how often are the trends observed in short term data misleading, and can we use characteristics of these trends to predict our likelihood of being misled? The experiences in reusing the LTER data will be captured and shared with the ecology and open science community. This project is supported by the National Science Foundation's Public Access Initiative which is managed by the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure on behalf of the Foundation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.