OCE-PRF: Variability in connectivity and receptivity of highly dynamic coastal ecosystems: implications for community structure and function in a recipient soft-sediment ecosystem

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。沿海生态系统面临来自陆地和海洋的压力，包括发展和海平面上升。必须更好地了解沿海生态系统如何运作，以便能够预测它们在未来条件下可能如何变化，并更好地管理现在和未来的这些环境。该项目将使用长期数据、观测研究和实验来了解更多关于海带森林和桑迪之间的关系。具体来说，这个项目将探索波浪，潮汐和海平面如何控制冲上岸的海带残骸的数量，海带森林的状况如何影响桑迪的生态，以及海滩残骸如何为在海滩上生活或寻找食物的动物提供栖息地和食物。该项目将使用无人机开发新的研究方法，并启动新的长期监测数据集，这将有助于保护这些重要的沿海生态系统。此外，该项目将支持下一代海洋科学家，并通过向本科和高中阶段代表性不足的少数群体提供研究机会和指导，增加该领域的多样性。该项目还将通过参加地球日活动、在公立高中客座演讲和在大学举办公共生物学日活动，提高社区对沿海生态系统和保护问题的认识。跨生态系统的连通性是许多生态系统的重要特征，对食物网、生物多样性和生态系统功能具有重要影响。桑迪海滩生态系统提供了一个独特的研究系统，生态系统补贴的作用，因为强大的自然梯度的类型和数量的海洋残骸投入和依赖的多营养层次的食物和栖息地的残骸。拟议的研究将使用观察，实验和理论相结合的方法来探索环境属性，包括生态系统的连通性，食物网补贴和自然变异如何跨尺度工作，以影响生物组织和生态系统功能的多个层次。本研究将利用近岸岩礁和桑迪，以了解在不同的环境条件下的补贴的命运，确定如何在捐助者生态系统的变化和稳定性影响的结构和功能的受体生态系统，并探讨如何在补贴的类型和供应率的变化影响其殖民化和复殖化。该项目还将启动和促进长期监测数据集，并利用基于无人驾驶航空器的方法和分析，在空间和时间尺度上量化生态系统补贴动态和命运。利用海带森林持续性的自然梯度和不同补贴投入的操纵性实地实验，将探讨补贴变化如何影响多个桑迪海滩营养群体的生物多样性。将利用实地实验，更好地限制补贴随着时间的推移以及在各种海洋和海滩条件下的动态和命运。这项研究将扩大了解海藻森林和海滩之间的耦合和碎屑海藻出口的命运。实地调查和实验的结果还将进一步阐明生态系统连通性对关键生态系统功能的重要性，从促进和维持生物多样性到次级生产力和这一碎屑食物网的其他方面。这项研究将对沿海生态系统的管理和保护产生影响，因为全球气候变化和其他直接的人为压力导致了沿海生态系统的连通性降低、变异性增加、食物资源和栖息地的丧失。该奖项反映了NSF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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Coastal ecosystems face pressures from both the land and the sea, including development and sea level rise. It is important to better understand how coastal ecosystems function so that predictions can be made about how they may change under future conditions and to better manage these environments now and in the future. This project will use long-term data, observational studies, and experiments to learn more about the relationship between kelp forests and sandy beaches. Specifically, this project will explore how waves, tides, and sea level control the amount of kelp wrack that washes ashore, how the condition of kelp forests impacts the ecology of sandy beaches, and how beach wrack provides habitat and food for animals that live or find food on beaches. This project will develop new research methods using drones and start new, long-term monitoring datasets that will contribute to the conservation of these important coastal ecosystems. Additionally, this project will support the next generation of marine scientists and increase diversity in the field by providing research opportunities and mentoring to under-represented minorities at the undergraduate and high school levels. This project will also increase community awareness of coastal ecosystems and conservation issues through Earth Day participation, guest lecturing at public high schools, and public biology days at the university. Cross-ecosystem connectivity is a critical feature of many ecosystems and has important implications for food webs, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning. Sandy beach ecosystems provide a unique study system for the role of ecosystem subsidies because of strong natural gradients in the type and amount of marine wrack inputs and the dependence of multiple trophic levels on wrack for food and habitat. The proposed research will use a combination of observations, experiments, and theory to explore how environmental attributes, including ecosystem connectivity, food web subsidies, and natural variation work across scales to affect multiple levels of biological organization and ecosystem functioning. This study will utilize nearshore rocky reefs and sandy beaches to understand the fate of subsidies under varying environmental conditions, determine how variability and stability in a donor ecosystem affects the structure and function of the recipient ecosystem, and to explore how variability in the type and supply rate of subsidies affects its colonization and remineralization. This project will also initiate and contribute to long-term monitoring datasets and utilize unoccupied aerial vehicle-based methodology and analyses to quantify ecosystem subsidy dynamics and fate across spatial and temporal scales. Using a natural gradient in kelp forest persistence and a manipulative field experiment varying subsidy inputs, it will explore how subsidy variability impacts the biodiversity of multiple sandy beach trophic groups. Field experiments will be utilized to better constrain the dynamics and fate of subsidies over time and across a range of oceanographic and beach conditions. This research will expand understanding of the coupling between kelp forests and beaches and the fate of detrital kelp export. Results from field surveys and experiments will also further elucidate the importance of ecosystem connectivity for critical ecosystem functions from promoting and maintaining biodiversity to secondary productivity and other aspects of this detrital food web. This study will have implications for management and conservation of coastal ecosystems in the face of reduced connectivity, increased variability, and loss of food resources and habitat associated with global climate change and other direct anthropogenic pressures.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.