Collaborative Research: GCR: Growing a New Science of Landscape Terraformation: The Convergence of Rock, Fluids, and Life to form Complex Ecosystems Across Scales

今天，美国和世界面临着一个日益紧迫的问题：如何更好地了解和管理复杂的物理-生物系统，以解决紧迫的问题，如：退化景观的恢复、生态系统服务的可持续管理，包括水循环和供应、生态系统营养、生物多样性、面对全球变化的碳封存，以及最终形成地球以外的行星。这些问题的根源是景观地貌的根本问题：生命如何以日益复杂和共生的形式在多个尺度的景观中扩展和维持自己，将裸露的岩石转变为复杂的多功能生态系统？这个由地球科学家(水文学家、地球化学家)、生物学家(进化基因学家、生态系统生态学家)和社会科学家(研究科学文化的人类学家)组成的日益增长的汇聚研究团队将利用一个独特而强大的“汇聚工具”--亚利桑那大学的景观演化观测站，由生物圈2号的三个大型试验性山坡组成--既揭示景观地形形成的关键机制，又催化跨学科思维的新方法，赋予下一代科学家权力并使其多样化，以实现汇聚研究。这项工作的中心调查是小规模的水文、地球化学、生态和进化过程如何相互作用，以形成新的景观规模的地形，跨越生物复杂性的三个阶段：从简单的岩石营养微生物群落(包括微生物结壳)，到非维管植物(无根的苔藓)，再到有根的维管植物和复杂的水力结构。实验将测试水流在景观中的模型表示，它在不同尺度上通过风化作用对岩石转化的影响，以及由此产生的改变这些景观及其生物宜居性的反馈。同时，当生物在贫瘠的地貌上定居并形成共生组合(特别是固氮)时，它们的组成和功能将被操纵，以从基因、特征和功能上的生物多样性中进行选择，以确定同时改变水文和地球化学过程的生物反馈。在这一过程中，融合研究将通过一个新颖的、以社会科学为基础的“融合科学的文化”调查对整个团队进行研究、理解和反映，该调查旨在确定有助于融合研究取得成功的做法。这项建议部分得到了临界区合作网络计划的支持。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The U.S. and the world today face the increasingly urgent question of how to better understand and manage complex physical-biological systems in order to address pressing problems such as: restoration of degraded landscapes, sustainable management of ecosystem services, including water cycling and supply, ecosystem nutrition, biodiversity, carbon sequestration in the face of global change, and eventually, terraforming planets beyond earth. At the root of these problems is the fundamental question of landscape terraformation: how does life expand and sustain itself, in increasingly complex and symbiotic forms, across landscapes at multiple scales to transform bare rock into complex multi-function ecosystems? This Growing Convergence Research team of earth scientists (hydrologists, geochemists), biologists (evolutionary genomicists, ecosystem ecologists), and social scientists (anthropologists who study cultures of science) will leverage a unique and powerful “convergence instrument” -- University of Arizona’s Landscape Evolution Observatory, consisting of three large experimental hillslopes at Biosphere 2 -- to both reveal key mechanisms of landscape terraformation and catalyze new ways of interdisciplinary thinking to empower and diversify this next generation of scientists to achieve convergence research. The central investigation of this work is of how small scale hydrological, geochemical, ecological and evolutionary processes interact to create emergent landscape-scale terraformation, across three stages of biological complexity: from simple lithotrophic microbial communities (including microbial crusts), to non-vascular plants (mosses without roots), to vascular plants with roots and sophisticated hydraulic architectures. Experiments will test model representations of water flow through landscapes, its effects on the transformation of rock via weathering at different scales, and thence, feedbacks which modify those landscapes and their biological habitability. At the same time, the composition and function of organisms as they colonize barren landscapes and develop symbiotic associations (especially for N fixation) will be manipulated to select from biological diversity in genes, traits, and functions, in order to identify the biological feedbacks which simultaneously transform hydrological and geochemical processes. In the process, convergence research will be studied, understood, and reflected through a novel, social science-based “Cultures of Convergence Science” investigation of the entire team in an ethnographic inquiry designed to identify practices conducive to successful convergence research. This proposal is supported in part by theCritical Zone Collaborative Network program.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.