LTER: KBS - Ecological and Social Mechanisms of Resilience in Agroecosystems

自1989年以来，凯洛格生物站长期生态研究计划的科学家们一直在研究农业系统的生态学。这项研究将把这项研究延长到40年，同时增加我们关于植物、昆虫、微生物、土壤和气候如何相互作用来塑造农业景观的知识。重要的是，在玉米和大豆作物占主导地位的美国中西部，农民越来越多地必须应对更温暖的气温和更频繁的干旱。该项目将研究不同的耕作和保护措施如何影响农业从这些事件中恢复的能力。过去30年的研究表明，一些做法比其他做法更能帮助作物从极端天气中恢复过来。例如，免耕耕作和种植覆盖作物可促进土壤健康，从而在干旱期间获得更稳定的作物产量。这项长期研究将确定，改善土壤健康和农业景观中的生物多样性是否可以帮助农民应对更加不可预测的未来。实验结果将通过向利益攸关方和政策制定者传播有关碳封存的知识来产生更广泛的影响。利用草原和其他保护区加强生态系统服务也将产生更广泛的影响，这项研究将减少STEM中代表性不足群体的障碍。弹性将根据土地利用强度的梯度确定，从传统农业到多年生生物能源种植系统，再到草原和其他自然区域。对不同生物体、生物物理资源、生物地球化学过程和气候因素的长期测量将揭示生态系统组成部分之间的联系，这可能是提高系统一级复原力的关键。确定了支撑农业生态系统复原力的三类机制--资源、多样性和适应。这一建议中的首要假设是，对这些机制的了解使关键生态系统过程的弹性能够在田野、景观和区域尺度上进行预测。具体的假设集中在：土壤资源对可用水、碳储存和温室气体排放的影响；微生物和节肢动物群落在植物和景观尺度上对生物多样性的影响；进化适应；以及受信仰和价值观影响的农民适应。这些假设将通过战略性设计的实验来解决，包括大规模的降雨操纵，在农田内引入常年草原地带，以及将覆盖美国中西部数千农民的农民调查。最后，科学家将引入新的工具来解决弹性如何在景观中扩展，使我们能够将特定地点的测量外推到该地区。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。

Since 1989, scientists at the Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research program have been studying the ecology of agricultural systems. This research would extend that research to 40 years while adding to our knowledge of how plants, insects, microbes, soils, and climate interact to shape agricultural landscapes. Importantly, in the US Midwest where corn and soy row crops predominate, farmers increasingly must deal with warmer temperatures and more frequent droughts. This project will study how different farming and conservation practices affect agriculture’s ability to recover from these events. The past three decades of research has shown that some practices help crops recover from extreme weather better than others. For example, no-till farming and the planting of cover crops builds soil health, leading to more stable crop yields through drought. This long term research will determine if improving soil health and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes can help farmers deal with a more unpredictable future. Experimental results will provide broader impacts through the dissemination of knowledge about carbon sequestration to stakeholders and policymakers. The use of prairie and other conservation areas to enhance ecosystem services will also provide broader impacts and the research will reduce barriers for underrepresented groups in STEM.Resilience will be determined across a gradient of land use intensities, ranging from conventional agriculture, to perennial bioenergy cropping systems, to prairie and other natural areas. Long-term measurements spanning diverse organisms, biophysical resources, biogeochemical processes, and climatic factors will reveal linkages among ecosystem components that may be key to enhancing system-level resilience. Three classes of mechanisms are identified that underlie agroecosystem resilience – resources, diversity, and adaptation. The overarching hypothesis in this proposal is that knowledge of these mechanisms enables the resilience of key ecosystem processes to be predicted at field, landscape, and regional scales. Specific hypotheses focus on: soil resources effects on water availability, carbon storage, and greenhouse gas emissions; on biodiversity effects of microbial and arthropod communities at plant and landscape scales; on evolutionary adaptation; and on farmer adaptation influenced by beliefs and values. These hypotheses will be addressed with strategically designed experiments, including a large-scale rainfall manipulation, the introduction of perennial prairie strips within agricultural fields, and a farmer survey that will reach thousands of farmers across the US Midwest. Finally, scientists will introduce new tools to address how resilience scales across landscapes that will allow us to extrapolate site-specific measurements to the region.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.