Collaborative Research: MRA: Strategies for surviving climate change and invasive species: Integrating multi-scale remote sensing and experimental common gardens

我们国家的健康、繁荣和福利在一定程度上取决于自然生态系统的复原力和稳定性及其提供的服务。 由于环境变化和外来物种入侵的综合影响，许多这些生态系统受到威胁。 在美国西南部，正在经历创纪录的温度上升和外来物种干扰，迫切需要了解植物和动物是否能够适应快速变化的景观。 该项目将利用国家生态观测网（氖）和氖的空中观测平台收集的数据，研究森林河流和溪流生态系统，这些生态系统对于提供清洁水、养分循环、自然水流、农业生产力和许多娱乐活动至关重要。 利用由数千棵弗里蒙特棉白杨叶杨组成的实验花园和航空遥感技术，研究小组将研究这些树木耐受盐雪松造成的热应力、干旱和栖息地干扰的能力，他们将研究树木可能用来适应环境变化的不同策略，包括生理和遗传变化。机制，并通过它们的根与土壤中的真菌的相互作用。 这些研究将包括为博士后研究人员、研究生和本科生提供培训机会。这个项目的结果将增加我们对三角叶棉白杨森林对环境变化和入侵物种的综合影响的耐受性的理解。 研究人员还将为高中生开发一个教育计划，现场图尔斯，研讨会和土地管理策略，利用这些树木的自然能力来适应快速的环境变化。三个主要假设将被测试：第一章来自物种分布的温暖和凉爽地区的弗里蒙特棉白杨基因型将显示出调节叶温和碳平衡的差异策略，作为对气候变化的适应性反应。热应激; 2）自然发生的种间杂交将产生更好地适应干旱和盐雪松入侵的杂交种; 3）与三角叶杨相关的菌根共生将促进生存和适应干旱和被入侵的土壤。 这些假设将从表型可塑性的角度整合-生物体对变化或新环境的反应-这通常是适应的主要机制。 将利用温室实验、已建立的普通花园和使用氖高光谱/激光雷达平台的遥感技术相结合，对表型可塑性进行评估。 该平台将使我们能够通过严格评估树木基因型反应（涉及物种分布中发生的基因，环境和基因x环境相互作用），将从当地复制的树木基因型（温室和普通花园）进行的测量扩展到景观规模。 我们将把在普通花园中获得的知识应用到西南部的广大地区，并在树冠尺度上预测哪些树木可能更容易受到环境变化的影响。 研究结果预计将提供关键的适应策略，河岸基础树木可能会用来科普温度升高和外来物种入侵的综合影响的关键信息。 我们的-该奖项的目标是利用一种被公认为对生物多样性保护至关重要的基础物种，开发出应对这些综合威胁的解决方案，并可作为美国西南部和世界各地干旱地区适应性管理的典范。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过利用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。

Our nation’s health, prosperity and welfare depends, in part, on the resilience and stability of natural ecosystems and the services they provide. Many of these ecosystems are threatened due to the combined impacts of environmental change and invasion by exotic species. In the American Southwest, which is experiencing record increases in temperature and exotic species disturbance, there is a pressing need to understand whether plants and animals will be able to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape. This project will use the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and data collected with NEON's airborne observational platform to study forested river and stream ecosystems, which are critical for providing clean water, nutrient cycling, natural water flow, agricultural productivity and many recreational activities. Using a combination of experimental gardens composed of thousands of Fremont cottonwood trees, and airborne remote sensing technology, the team will examine the capacity these trees have to tolerate heat stress, drought and habitat disturbance caused by salt cedar, a major invasive plant of the southwestern U.S. They will investigate different strategies which the trees may use to adapt to environmental change including physiological and genetic mechanisms, and through the interactions of their roots with fungi in the soil. The studies will include training opportunities for postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students. Results from this project will increase our understanding of how tolerant cottonwood forests are to the combined impacts of environmental change and invasive species. The researchers will also develop an education program for high school students, site tours, workshops and land management strategies that capitalize on these trees’ natural abilities to adapt to rapid environmental change.Three major hypotheses will be tested: 1) Fremont cottonwood genotypes from warm and cool regions of the species distribution will show differential strategies for regulating leaf temperature and carbon balance as an adaptive response to heat stress; 2) Naturally occurring interspecific hybridization will produce hybrids that are better adapted to both drought and salt cedar invasion; 3) mycorrhizal symbioses associated with cottonwoods will promote survival and adaptation to drought and soils that have been altered by invasive tamarisk. These hypotheses will be integrated from the perspective of phenotypic plasticity - an organism’s response to a changing or novel environment - that is often a primary mechanism of adaptation. Phenotypic plasticity will be evaluated using a combination of greenhouse experiments, established common gardens and remote sensing technology using a NEON hyperspectral/lidar platform. This platform will allow us to scale measurements taken from local, replicated tree genotypes (greenhouse and common gardens) to a landscape scale by critically evaluating tree genotype responses that involve gene, environment and gene x environment interactions that occur across the species’ distribution. We will apply the knowledge gained in the common gardens to broad parts of the Southwest and predict, at the canopy scale, which trees may be more susceptible to environmental change. Results are anticipated to provide critical information on key adaptive strategies that riparian foundation trees may use to cope with the combined impacts of temperature increase and exotic species’ invasion. Our over-arching goal is to develop solutions to these combined threats using a foundation species that is recognized as being critically important for biodiversity conservation and could serve as a model for adaptive management of arid regions in the Southwestern U.S. and around the world.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.